


Out of the Dead Land

by emilyenrose



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, M/M, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-06 20:48:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 62,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1871955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyenrose/pseuds/emilyenrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone is building machines that look and act like people. </p><p>Meanwhile, the Winter Soldier tries to be Bucky Barnes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the hollow man

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Out of the Dead Land (translation)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3659727) by [BlueSunrise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueSunrise/pseuds/BlueSunrise)
  * Translation into Deutsch available: [Out of the Dead Land (Übersetzung)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12324000) by [Silent_Storm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silent_Storm/pseuds/Silent_Storm)



> It’s been a pleasure writing this. I need to thank a lot of people: petrichoral, who knows a lot more about writing than me; tenlittlebullets, who gets Steve better than anyone I know; M, for all her helpful encouragement and criticism, and E, who speaks American; everyone who read and commented on the original kinkmeme version; everyone who read and commented on the AO3 version; and especially the original prompter, _sine qua non_. I’m afraid I strayed a little bit from the prompt, dude. In my defence, I really like robots.  <3

_APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding_  
 _Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing_  
 _Memory and desire, stirring_  
 _Dull roots with spring rain._

 

* * *

 

The soldier was supposed to come in for debriefing and reset, but there was nowhere to go and no one to debrief him.

He spent eight days in a safe house waiting for someone to come and get him. He was a valuable asset. He was supposed to wait.

No one came.

The pictures of Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes in the Smithsonian matched his own face. He checked his reflection in a glass case to be sure. Differences could be accounted for by hairstyle, a different diet, three to five years' ageing. There were books for sale in the gift shop. He glanced at the security cameras—poorly angled—and shoplifted a couple. He had no money. He needed information.

The soldier read the personal accounts of men who had known Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes. He cross referenced them against each other. He went looking for more information. A great deal was publicly available. He went to libraries and scanned books, articles, websites. He committed key details to memory.

The Captain's recognition had been genuine. That much was obvious. The thought sat oddly in his mind when he had it, unconnected to anything else.  He kept it in the back of his mind while he gathered information.

He was supposed to come in for debriefing and reset. He was supposed to come in—

Bucky Barnes was good-natured, easy-going, popular with his fellow soldiers, known for his charm especially with women, loyal until death. He was a first-rate hand to hand fighter as well as a sniper. He came from Brooklyn. He had three younger siblings living at the time of his death. He followed Captain America—

It was not difficult to become someone. The soldier knew how to do it the way he knew how to plan an ambush, pull a trigger, blend into any crowd; it was part of what he was. To become someone it was necessary to inhabit their skin, and the key was detail: the diplomatic aide taking off his wedding ring before he went to bed with a stranger, the late night security guard yawning and scratching his belly as he glanced at a picture of his kids, the taxi driver starting a friendly conversation with his passengers as he drove them somewhere the bodies would not be found. The soldier did not remember ever doing any of those things, but he had done them all in the course of his duties.

Bucky Barnes was good-natured, easy-going, popular with his fellow soldiers—

Bucky, he tried the name on his tongue. Bucky. I'm Bucky. That's me. He decided Bucky probably preferred being himself to being the Winter Soldier, and started favoring his right arm, using his flesh and blood hand to touch things and pick them up instead of his metal one wherever possible.

He followed Captain America—

The soldier ( _Bucky_ ) stalked the Captain for several days. He bugged the house the Captain lived in and listened to conversations. The Captain was visited by both the Black Widow and the Falcon. He was a good source of information on his own history, and he mentioned Bucky Barnes several times. The Winter Soldier listened for the cadences of his accent and the obsolete turns of phrase that the Captain's friends reacted to with confusion or amusement. His own voice settled into the patterns easily, as if he'd known them for years. He located some scissors and cut his own hair, raggedly, without a mirror.

Debriefing and reset. He was supposed to come in for—

On an April morning six weeks after his first visit to the museum, he pounded on the front door of the Captain's apartment a couple of times right-handed. Then he waited.

The Captain's recognition had been genuine, he thought. The thought had been lurking in the back of his mind all this time while he gathered information, while he prepared. Now it was joined by another thought which made it relevant, which made it make sense: the Captain knew this Bucky Barnes. The Captain knew what he was supposed to do.

Of course he had to go to him.

The Captain opened the door, and stopped, and stared. His mouth moved but made no sound.

"Hiya, Steve," said Bucky. "Sorry I'm late." He swallowed. "Can I come in?"

 

* * *

 

They sat on couches in a cluttered room. The Captain—Steve—couldn't stop looking at him.

"I got something on my face?" Bucky said finally.

"No—Bucky—Christ," said Steve. "I just," he laughed a little wetly, "I'm not sure I'm not dreaming. I thought you were dead. I saw you fall."

"We both fell," said the soldier uncertainly. That had been only a few weeks ago. The Captain must have known he'd survived, because if he hadn't the Captain wouldn't have been dragged to shore.

"No, I meant," said Steve. "The bridge."

It took a moment for his mind to find the right piece of information. The bridge. Sergeant Barnes gave his life for his country during an engagement with the enemy on—

He looked up. Steve's expression had changed. "You don't remember," he said quietly.

"I don't remember a lot of things," said Bucky. "The bridge, I—" He stopped. "We were there for Hydra," he said. "For Arnim Zola." That was in the books. Saying the name sent an odd shiver through him. He ignored it; not relevant. "Weren't we? And there were bad guys—"

"Wearing masks," Steve finished for him. "With those Hydra energy weapons, the ones that disintegrated people."

Bucky nodded. His left hand twitched with the knowledge of the shape of a gun.

"I don't remember the rest," he said. "What happened?"

Steve smiled at him, a funny lopsided smile, suspiciously bright-eyed. He started to talk. Bucky hung on every word. He only interrupted once, when Steve talked about rescuing him from a Hydra goon. "Tell me I at least said something funny when you were saving me. This is undignified."

Steve smirked. "You said you had him on the ropes."

"Sure I did," said Bucky.

"Yeah, that's what I said."

"Punk."

Steve laughed again, properly. It made his eyes crinkle up at the corners. The soldier filed away that information the way he filed away everything else he’d learned about the Captain.

There wasn't much left to the story. The laughter quickly vanished from Steve's expression as he told the rest of it. "And I—I couldn't reach you. I couldn't catch you," he said at last, and stopped to turn his face away, wipe his eyes with the back of his hand. The soldier waited, but the Captain didn't start talking again, only sat there with his head down, not looking at him.

"What about Zola?" he asked.

"What?" said Steve.

"The bad guy," he said, "the mission. Did we get him?"

"Yeah," said Steve after a moment. "Yeah, we got him. You fell, but we got him." He swallowed. "It didn’t feel worth it."

Worth it. That was a strange concept, one that people didn’t normally bother to share with him. It hardly mattered to the Winter Soldier whether any given mission was worth it or not. Pricked by a strange curiosity, he asked, "Was it worth it?"

Steve paused. His mouth went into a tight line. He said, "If we hadn’t had Zola’s information," and stopped.

He followed the line of Steve’s gaze, but there was nothing there; he was staring blindly at the window, and outside there was just an ordinary spring day in the city.

"If we hadn’t had Zola’s information, the Red Skull would probably have flattened every major city in the States," Steve said. "I... I told myself, in the end, at least you didn’t die for nothing."

"I didn’t die," he said, for no reason except that it appeared to be true. Three to five years’ ageing, that was all.

Steve made a strangled noise and got to his feet. He took Bucky's hand and dragged him up off the couch, pulling him into a tight embrace. The soldier went still at the feeling of Steve's arms locked around him. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what Bucky would do. He heard the Captain take a shuddering breath before he muttered, "Sorry," and started to step back.

Then he did know what Bucky would do.

"C'mere," he said, and he hauled Steve back in. He put his good arm around him, pressed the palm of his human hand against the back of Steve's neck, put his face down against Steve's solid shoulder. After a moment Steve's arms locked close around him again. He could hear Steve's breathing, and feel the rise and fall of his chest where they were pressed together.

"I can't believe you're really here," said Steve, muffled.

"I'm here," said Bucky. He kept his face hidden against Steve's shoulder, and his metal arm still by his side. "I'm here."

 

* * *

 

The soldier dreamed, that night, of a sound. A long shrieking howl of wind rushing past him.

He woke in the dark under the blankets on the couch, and thought about the sound. It was attached to nothing else in his mind. It came from the Captain's story.

Bucky Barnes must have been afraid when he fell, he thought. Afraid when he died.

 

* * *

 

"Holy shit," said the Falcon.

"Sam, I'd like you to meet my old friend Bucky. Bucky, Sam," said Steve, with a defiant note in his voice.

"Holy _shit_. Does Natasha know about this? No way does Natasha know about this."

"Nice to meetcha," said Bucky. He gave Sam a rueful grin.

"Am I supposed to pretend this isn't insane?" said Sam. "Steve, do you even remember what happened the last time we saw this guy?" He gave Bucky a look and added, "No offense."

Bucky shrugged.

Steve's face took on that stubborn look. "Sam—"

"Steve, you are one of the best guys I’ve ever met, so don’t take it the wrong way if I say you are maybe a little low on self-preservation instincts," Sam said. "I sat by that hospital bed for you. I don’t wanna do it again if I don’t have to." He turned to the soldier and said, "If you really are Steve’s old friend Bucky then you know damn well why I’ve got concerns right now. Don’t you?"

 _If you really are_ —

Bucky nodded. He licked his lips. "He's got a point, Steve," he said. "You know he does."

"Right! Thank you! He’s here and I’m glad he’s here, it’s gonna save me plenty of money on gas if we don’t have to chase him all over the country like you were planning, but you cannot just keep him on your _couch_ , Steve, come on. He’s trouble. _This_ is trouble." Sam was gesturing big. He glanced at Bucky again. "Still no offense."

"Sam—" said Steve.

Sam raised his eyebrows and held up his hands. "Am I wrong? Tell me I'm wrong."

"You're wrong," said Steve.

The soldier knew what Bucky Barnes ought to say. "He's not wrong," he said.

"Bucky—"

"He's not wrong," Bucky said again. He had to feel his way through what he said next. It was both easy and hard to think the way Bucky Barnes would think. The Winter Soldier neither considered nor reflected: he had no past and no need for one. But Bucky Barnes had _been_ the Winter Soldier. He would take that into account when he talked.

"Steve, I'm dangerous," he said at last. "You know I'm dangerous. You've seen it. You gotta be careful."

"I'm not afraid of you, Bucky," said Steve steadily. He met Bucky’s eyes for a long moment.

Bucky drew a breath for the next thing he had to say, but no words came.

"Well I'm scared out of my mind, so at least one of us is sane," Sam muttered. "Listen, Steve, I came here with a message from—" he glanced at Bucky "—a friend, but now I'm thinking maybe we've got more urgent things to worry about, so—"

"A mission?" the soldier said.

 

* * *

 

"I want it on the record that I have serious doubts about bringing him," Sam grumbled over his headset.

"Bucky and I work well together," said Steve’s voice in Bucky’s ear. "Always did. Thought you said I wasn’t allowed to leave him on my couch, anyway."

The soldier laughed, low, because Bucky would. He settled himself into the shadows of his perch. The weight of the sniper rifle was satisfying, his field of vision clear. He could see the faint shape of the Falcon waiting on top of a building opposite. The wings were extended, angular shapes in the gloom. He remembered destroying the last set, but did not waste time wondering where these ones came from.

The Falcon was not well hidden, but he did not need to be. Operatives on the level of their current targets were unlikely to remember to look up, and between them they could see every exit from the Hydra compound. The Captain was below. Bucky didn't like that he was going in alone, but there was information in his mind about bases like this one, ground plans and defenses and security systems, and he'd already relayed it. He knew the Captain's capabilities ( _hand to hand fighter, enhanced strength and healing, precise and tactical, team leader, dislikes civilian casualties, watch for the shield_ —)

Steve could handle himself.

He watched the exits and picked off the panicking Hydra operatives one by one when they tried to evacuate. He was aware that the Falcon was paying more attention to him than to their targets. He ignored it, breathed slow and deep, aimed and fired. He wasn’t leaving anything for the Falcon to do anyway. He was a valuable asset; he was effective, he was useful. Bodies fell one by one, in a world that was clear, that made sense. The Captain knew what he was supposed to do, and the soldier understood perfectly how to do it.

The Captain emerged from the base not via one of the exits, but through a wall, in a shower of brick and plaster dust. He was locked in combat with an operative dressed all in black. The two figures rolled over together, and there was no clear shot. The soldier watched through his crosshairs. The bounds and rebounds of the colorful shield were oddly soothing to observe.

(The Hydra operative was not, in the soldier’s expert opinion, a match for Captain America. Steve was breathing a little harder than usual, but with a slight smile around his mouth. He seemed to be enjoying himself.)

"Hey!" said the Falcon sharply in Bucky’s ear, and he realized his attention had slipped, that he’d failed to notice two more operatives emerging from the base and stalking towards the Captain. Both of these were more heavily armed than those who had tried to flee the base earlier, and they moved differently, heading towards Steve with confidence, with slow menace. There was something familiar about them, the soldier thought, and did not understand why he felt uneasy.

The Falcon was already throwing himself into an elegant dive. His wings snapped wide open and then folded as he dropped to engage the leftmost of the new hostiles. It glanced up and then rolled to the side just in time to avoid the diving attack. The soldier knew the Falcon was competent enough to distract it. He took aim at the other. His finger tightened on the trigger in the space between breaths: a perfect shot—

—and he was still watching through his scope so he saw his target’s reaction, unbelievably fast. The head turned very slightly upwards towards his perch, and then the hand came up and his bullet was snatched cleanly out of the air. There should have been a blood spray, but there was nothing.

There was a curse over his headset. "Did you _see_ that?" the Falcon said in his ear. "How—Steve, watch out!"

But the warning was unnecessary. When the two hostiles saw that the Captain had dealt with his target, they both turned and ran, inhumanly fast. The soldier could have tried to drop them as they disappeared into the night. He did not. His hands were shaking.

On the ground the Captain and the Falcon were standing together looking down at the Captain’s erstwhile opponent. There was foam around the man’s mouth. He was very definitely dead.

"I only knocked him out," said Steve as Bucky came to join them. "He was the one giving the orders." He glanced in the direction the two heavily-armed hostiles had gone. It was unlikely they’d succeed in tracking them down now. "I thought."

"What _were_ those guys?" Sam said. "One of them nearly grounded me. Went straight for the wings. _Way_ faster than he looked." He made a face and added, "I think he scratched them up. And who catches a bullet like that?"

"I don’t know," said Steve.

The soldier said, quietly, "I could."

When they both looked at him he flexed his left arm. Metal moved against metal, whisper smooth. He avoided their eyes and didn’t think about why.

"Do you think they were like you, Bucky?" said Steve. "I mean—enhanced, like you. The arm."

That wasn’t what he’d meant. "I don’t know," the soldier said. Then he said it again: "I don’t know."

"Okay," said Steve after a pause. "We’re done here. We’ll report in and then—"

Bucky Barnes, he told himself, he had to beBucky Barnes. "And then I’m starving. Give us a break, Steve. There’s gotta be something good to eat in the future," he glanced at Sam for support, "Right?"

 

* * *

 

They sat on the couches in Steve's front room and ordered pizza. Sam spread his wings out on the floor and went over them clucking his tongue. "Son of a bitch," he said, "he did scratch them, look at that."

"They damaged?" said Steve.

"They can take worse," said Sam. "And I can do field repairs later. It’s just _annoying_ , man." He patted the wings gently before he folded them up and put them away. "Where’s that pizza?"

The pizza was good. The soldier ate it steadily and listened to Steve telling Sam stories about the Howling Commandos between bites. Having Bucky with him on a mission seemed to have woken something in him—or maybe, the soldier thought, he was trying to convince Sam of something. Whichever it was, the words came out of him so freely that sometimes he was talking with his mouth full, and he switched from one thread to another, one mission in Belgium and another in France and a week on leave in London, like he couldn't pick which one to talk about. Every memory seemed to lead him on to half a dozen more, each one full of layers and layers of detail, things Steve had seen, heard, felt. He kept looking over at Bucky and grinning, that same crinkle-eyed smile that was getting to be familiar.

Bucky spoke now and then, when he could. He gave details from the books, the first-hand accounts he'd read. Sometimes he added things, or made them up, things that seemed right, that Bucky Barnes would have noticed. It was easy to do it. He let himself sink into the flow of Steve's storytelling until he almost felt like he did remember the events Steve was describing and the people he spoke of with such affection.

"And then Peggy came in—" Steve said.

"Wasn't she wearing a red dress?" said Bucky, a stab in the dark that felt like it was angled right.

He was rewarded with Steve's smile, which was huge. "Yeah, yeah she was. She looked like a million bucks. Of course you started flirting with her—"

"—can't blame a guy for trying—"

"And my heart sank," Steve explained, turning to Sam. "Bucky always got all the attention back home. I mean, he was the good-looking one, tall and handsome. He’d talk a couple of girls into a date with him and his friend—and then when I showed up, I was usually a head shorter than them. Talk about a disappointment."

"You know, I’ve seen pictures, but I still find it hard to imagine," Sam said, grinning. The soldier knew exactly what he meant, but couldn’t say  _me too_. Bucky Barnes had known the small, sickly version of Steve Rogers much longer than the powerful weapon created by the serum. It was this one that should seem strange to him, not the other.

Steve laughed at Sam and carried on the thread of his story. “Sometimes he'd get me a girl for a double date and then pick her up too by the end of the night."

"You dog, Barnes," said Sam, but he was laughing. Bucky—dragged himself back into the moment, smirked, mimed a helpless shrug.

"So Bucky starts his routine on Peggy," said Steve, "and I think well, that's it, then."

"But she looked right through me," Bucky said. This story wasn't in any of the information he'd found but it didn't need to be. He knew the right answer because of everything else he knew about Steve Rogers, because of the way Steve sounded when he spoke about this woman. He looked at Steve for confirmation. "Didn’t she?"

Steve seemed to be holding his breath. He nodded very slightly.

"She didn't have eyes for anyone but Steve,” Bucky went on more confidently. “Smart dame."

"Yeah," said Steve, and his good humor faded a little. He was still smiling, if a little sadly, when he said, "Yeah, she always was."

"What happened to her?" said Sam.

"She got married after the war. Had kids. Helped found SHIELD. She's in her nineties now."

His tone of voice said there was more, and that he didn’t want to talk about it. Sam clearly understood. He nodded, solemn.

Bucky Barnes wouldn’t let Steve sit there looking like that. The soldier had to struggle, reaching for the right thing to say, and what came out of his mouth was, "In her nineties like us.”

Steve's smile went a little less wistful. He reached out and touched Bucky’s right arm, the human one, like he was grounding himself. "Yeah. Like us."

 

* * *

 

"Tonight's the most I've ever heard you talk about the war," said the Falcon. The soldier listened quietly from the shadowed hallway. He could just see the side of the Captain’s face from this position.

"I think it's the most I've talked about it since I woke up here.”

"Feel good?"

"Yeah," said the Captain. "Yeah." After a moment he went on, "You know, when I woke up after the ice, and everything was different, there were times I wondered if maybe I'd just dreamed my whole life while I was under there. If none of it was real. I stumbled out into Times Square the first day and I thought I’d lost my mind." He laughed a little bit. The soldier, memorizing, cataloging, thought it wasn’t a happy sound. "But right now," the Captain said, "I don’t feel crazy anymore."

"How do you feel?" the Falcon asked.

"Like—like maybe things are going to be okay." The Captain took a deep breath. "Sam, I thought this was going to be hell. It’s _been_ hell. But now instead it’s—he’s remembering. He knows me. He came to _me_."

The Falcon cleared his throat. Discomfort. "Listen, Steve. I'm not going to say I get it, because I've got no clue how I would feel in your position. I think it would half kill me if someone I've lost, if—God, if Riley came back like that. I can see how much the guy means to you. And you know I’ve been there."

"I know," said Steve. "Sam—"

"But I think maybe I’m seeing a little clearer than you right now, so you gotta trust me, Steve. I’m telling you that sometimes when something seems too good to be true, it’s because maybe it is," the Falcon said. He was trying to be gentle about it, the soldier thought. "We still don’t know for sure why he came to you or what he thinks he’s doing here. It’s not so long ago he was trying to kill you. And the guy who dropped a couple of dozen Hydra operatives with headshots earlier this evening, I don’t think that’s necessarily the guy you remember."

"He's Bucky," said Steve. "He was always a sniper, he was always a fighter. We weren't kids playing around. It was a war."

"Yeah, no, I get that," said Sam. "But that's not what I'm talking about. Listen, for you it was an eye blink, right? You went down in 1945 and when you woke up it was the future and everything had changed but you. You, you stayed the same guy. But him—he turned into someone else in between, and we know almost nothing about that guy. Knowing nothing, that's what worries me."

Steve stayed quiet. The soldier breathed lightly, kept his stance loose. The metal fingers of his left hand twitched by his side.

"I'm really glad to meet your old friend Bucky, Steve," said Sam. "I think I could probably get to like your old friend Bucky. He seems like an okay guy. But that doesn't mean I like it that you've got the Winter Soldier sleeping on your couch. At the very least he needs debriefing, and I know you know that."

"Who’s going to debrief him?" said Steve. "SHIELD?" His tone made it clear what he thought of that. There was no SHIELD now.

"No. You need to call Natasha," said Sam. "You know you do."

"I—" said Steve. The soldier saw him glance towards the door.

Bucky walked back into the room. "Is there any of that pizza left?" he asked.

 

* * *

 

"Natasha means the Black Widow, doesn’t it?" he said when Sam was gone. She was an associate of the Captain’s. He’d listened to her conversations with him when he was scouting for details of the Captain’s life. He knew they were friends. He also knew that she was a fast, agile, deceptively strong and clever opponent in combat, though he had no idea how he knew that. The information was just there.

Steve gave him a wry look. "I was wondering how much of that you heard."

"I don’t," he began, and then stopped. Debriefing was correct, debriefing was what he required. Debriefing and then—

"I don’t want to talk to anyone. Not yet," he said.

Whatever Steve saw in his face made him look serious. "You don’t have to," he said. He touched Bucky’s human arm again, warm fingers against the inside of Bucky’s elbow, and then pulled his hand quickly away. Bucky didn’t understand any of that, so he ignored it. "I’m on your side," Steve said softly. "I promise."

 

* * *

 

Bucky slept on Steve's couch. He wore Steve's track pants and soft t-shirts which were too big for him until Steve went out and bought him some clothes. He only left the house a couple of times, after nightfall, to go running with Steve. He would have preferred not to do that either—something in him disliked the idea of walking around in public places, risking recognition for no reason—but Steve wanted it, said nothing but clearly wanted it, so Bucky suggested it. Steve was faster than he was, but slowed his pace to stay close to him.

His hair grew out a little of the ragged rough chop he'd given it. He tried slicking it back when Steve wasn't there but the result looked wrong, made his face too hollow. He practiced Bucky Barnes' expressions in the bathroom mirror in the mornings, the smirk and the smile and the quirked eyebrow. He watched the baseball on the TV. He listened to Steve.

"I never used to do so much of the talking," Steve said to him.

"I know," said Bucky.

"It's okay," said Steve quickly. "I know you've been through—I know. You don't have to talk till you want to."

"I want to, pal," said Bucky. "I just don't know what to say."

Steve still left spaces in everything he said, room for Bucky to comment on the story he was telling or make a joke or just plain interrupt him. It was like the rhythm of combat, strike and return, except the return was seldom there. Sometimes it would be obvious to the soldier what Bucky would think, what he'd say, how he'd nudge and tease. Sometimes he'd have no idea what was meant to go into the yawning gap. He didn't dare risk it and get it wrong.

The world of Steve's stories became familiar. He'd learned about the war, before he came in, but now he learned it from the inside. It made more sense the way Steve told it. There were objectives, targets, assets acquired or destroyed, mission outcomes to focus on. Steve never said it that way exactly, but the soldier could hear it in the shape of the stories, and he held onto it. Those things were pegs in his mind for all the other details Steve told him, intricate recollections of people and places and individual conversations, sights and sounds and smells and feelings. He learned about a Hydra cell eliminated in Poland and _the coldest goddamn night, even I felt it_ ; a counterintelligence mission in London and _the cathedral never burned, they kept a fire watch on the roof right through the worst of the Blitz_ ; a raid in support of the French resistance and _do you know, even in the middle of all that, I've still never seen anything so beautiful as the Alps in the sunlight_.

Bucky Barnes was always there, in the stories. "You always had my back," said Steve. "Right back to when we were kids."

The soldier nodded. Bucky Barnes had fought for Steve Rogers, defended him, attacked for him, followed him wherever he led. He had done his duty. He had already possessed this knowledge, but he still filed Steve’s words away, additional intel. He thought about them most days.

He had more dreams. Dreams meant he was overdue for a reset; he knew this. He should have reported them but no one asked. He still needed debriefing but Steve hadn’t said anything else about it.

In his dreams his mind rebuilt the world of Steve's stories, set photographs he'd seen of long-dead strangers into motion. He sat above them on a sniper's perch and eliminated hostiles. Sometimes he heard the sound of the shrieking wind in the night. It usually woke him up. He would lie there waiting to go back to sleep, and while he waited he thought about being Bucky Barnes. About what it would have been like to follow a man like Steve into war.

Once, and only once, he woke up to find Steve crouched down by him. He had a hand reached out, not quite touching Bucky's good shoulder. "I heard—you were—" he said, and then stopped.

Bucky waited, hardly breathing.

Steve took his hand away. "I'm not tired," he said. "I might watch a movie. Do you want to stay up with me?"

Bucky sat up, licked his lips. "Could you—talk?"

"Talk?" said Steve, sounding surprised.

"Talk. Say anything you like. Tell me about the old days."

"Does that help?"

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, it helps."

Steve switched the lights on. He sat on the floor near Bucky and started telling a story about New York, a fistfight Bucky had rescued him from. Bucky closed his eyes and listened, committing facts to memory. Sometimes he'd parrot back a memorized detail from one of Steve's stories a day or two later, making it sound as if it was something he remembered for himself. Steve liked that. He never caught on.

He was supposed to report it if he was having dreams. He was overdue for a reset.

He didn't say anything. Steve didn't make him.

 

* * *

 

Once when he woke with the howling wind in his ears he got up and went into Steve's room instead of lying there thinking. Steve was sleeping deep, his breathing slow, head turned sideways on the pillow. He slept in a wide sprawl, covers half kicked off the bed. The soldier looked at the strong shape he made in the half-dark. He looked very real.

He thought about a story the Captain had told about a mission in France, enemy patrols everywhere, all the Commandos on edge. Steve had described sleeping with his boots on and a hand on his gun. You had to sleep lightly when there was a threat in the darkness.

Bucky stood just inside the doorway and watched for a long while. He hardly noticed that he was slowing his own breathing to match the steady rise and fall of Steve's chest.

 

* * *

 

When the Black Widow arrived, she arrived with a mission.

"It should be simple," she said. "It's an underground bunker, and we think it's storage, not an active cell. It'll be hand-to-hand work if it's anything, but there's a good chance the place is empty. We're there for any intel we can find." Her eyes slid sideways over Bucky, but she didn't say anything to or about him. She'd barely reacted to Steve's introduction. Faced with her like this, as an ally instead of an opponent, the soldier wasn’t sure what to make of her.

Underground and hand-to-hand meant no Falcon. The Captain took point. The place was set up like a series of offices, but there was a thick layer of dust over everything. It had clearly been empty for a long time. Bucky would relax, be relieved, the soldier thought, but he couldn't do it. Something felt unpleasant. He had a slight persistent headache.

The Widow powered up a computer and bent over it. The Captain pulled a sheaf of papers out of a drawer and flicked through them, reading. The soldier stood in the shadows with his back to a wall and watched the doors.

He heard a scratching sound behind him an instant before the first attacker ploughed through the thin wall in a shower of dust.

Steve yelled, "Bucky!" and started towards him, and then two more figures burst through the wall opposite and he was fully occupied. Bucky instinctively brought his right hand up to block his attacker's chokehold and slammed his left fist back into the man's head with a blow that should have smashed his skull.

It left a slight dent. There was a ringing sound, metal on metal.

The robot reeled backwards a step or two, balance thrown. The soldier lunged at it. The other two were fully occupied with their own sudden attackers. It took him a moment to remember that Bucky would tell them. Before he could Steve had already made the same discovery and shouted, "They're robots! Look out—"

Natasha was already coolly adjusting her fighting style. Bucky—

—didn't like the metal arm—

—was a first rate hand-to-hand fighter—

"Bucky, just smash it!" roared Steve over to his right, and in his peripheral vision Bucky saw him set the shield on his arm and take out an android with a right hook that sent it flying into a wall with a crunching sound. It twitched, sparked, and lay still.

Bucky's attacker lunged for him again and this time he let instinct carry him. He set his stance and let the thing close with him. He dropped under the tackle, locked his metal fingers around its throat and wrenched. The android kept lashing out even when its head was bent back at an impossible neck-snapping angle. He twisted his arm sharply and its head came right off in a shower of sparks, revealing a mess of trailing wires. It was a clean kill; there was no spurt of arterial blood the way there would have been with a human opponent. He threw the head aside and turned, rising smoothly to his feet to face two more robots that had come through the gap in the wall. He was already assessing the threat—they would try to come up on his right side, which was weaker; the arm was a better weapon against these than a knife or a gun; he needed to—

The shield spun past his face in a colored flash, bounced off the wall beside him, and knocked the last two robots down like dominoes. The Widow fired two shots. Both hostiles slumped where they'd fallen.

"Armor-piercing rounds," the Widow said. "Main power source is shielded by the ribcage, but not well. It's on the right hand side. Secondary power in the skull. The other vulnerability is the throat, if you're strong enough."

There were six things that looked like human bodies scattered around them. "What are these things?" said the Captain. He gingerly picked up the head of the one the soldier had decapitated, looking unnerved. Its eyes flashed dully and it snapped its teeth at him.

"I don't know," said the Widow. "Hawkeye reported encountering one in Prague last month, but we thought it was a one-off. If I'd expected these tonight I would have warned you."

"We’ve seen them," the soldier said. Both of them looked at him. It was the first thing he’d said since the mission began. "The last mission. The one that caught the bullet. It was one of these."

The Captain nodded slowly. "That makes sense." He put down the head he was holding, oddly gentle. Bucky didn’t understand the gentleness until the Captain said uncomfortably, "They look a lot like people."

It was true, they did. The robots had realistic skin and hair, and they were wearing normal everyday clothes, things you might see on the street.

"Well, they're not," the Widow said.

The soldier said nothing.

The Widow nodded towards the series of gaps in the wall the robots had made when they erupted into the office. The corridor beyond was blue-lit and metallic. "Looks like this place is bigger than we thought. Shall we?"

They encountered no people, but there were four more squadrons of androids. They seemed to be patrols and they attacked on sight. They were tough opponents; each six-man squad was harder to beat than the last. "They're learning," said the Captain after the third encounter. "Is that possible?"

"Looks like it," said the Widow.

The blue-lit corridors led to a door marked COLD STORAGE. On the other side was a long room filled with rows of glass-fronted tanks, one robot per tank, hanging suspended in fluid with their eyes open. There were at least a hundred of them. Steve was obviously disturbed. Natasha only murmured, "But what are they for?"

Bucky walked towards a control panel at the far end of the room and put in the first password that occurred to him. "Codename: Winter Soldier. Acknowledged," bleated a synthesized voice from a speaker overhead.

"Bucky, what are you—" said Steve.

He felt rather than saw the Widow slip into a ready stance and take aim.

"Natasha!" said Steve.

There was a big red button on the far right of the control panel. It looked promising. He hit it. An alarm sounded. The blue lights in the tanks switched to red. "Command acknowledged," said the computer. "Destruction sequence initiated."

Something green began pumping through the clear fluid of the suspension tanks. The human-looking skin of the sleeping androids began to bubble and melt like plastic, revealing metal underneath which started to buckle in turn. Slurry dripped down to the bottom of the tanks. Bucky turned back to the others.

"Well, did you want to wake them up and fight them one at a time?" he said to Steve's shocked look.

Steve started to grin. "Would've taken a while, I guess."

Natasha kept her pistols aimed at Bucky. "What do you know about these things?" she demanded.

"Nothing,” said Bucky. “Nothing."

"Then how did you know what that would do?"

"Easy—" said Steve.

Bucky shrugged.

"I need an answer."

"I don't know," he said. "Sometimes I know things I don't know."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Steve hoist the shield on his arm. Natasha's eyes flicked sideways to Steve, and back to him. She slowly lowered her pistols. Her face was expressionless.

"Let's keep moving," she said.

A door leading off the tank room turned out to be an entrance to a laboratory. One wall was paneled with screens, and there were computers awake and humming. Natasha took a seat in front of one, glanced up at Bucky, and said, "Any chance you know the password for this one?"

He shook his head. He couldn't even remember what he'd used for the control panel ten minutes ago. Natasha's lips twisted and she turned to her work. Steve came and stood next to him, on his right side. Their shoulders were nearly touching. "Hey, Bucky," he said. "Want to help me look around?"

"Sure," said Bucky. "Why not?"

 

* * *

 

"Natasha's a cautious person," said Steve quietly. They were on the other side of the laboratory looking at an empty human-sized tank. "She's got lots of reasons to be. She'll see."

He nodded. Steve was standing very close to him. Close enough to touch if he wanted to.

"Don't let it get to you," Steve said. He did touch, then. His hand on Bucky’s elbow was a brief steadying pressure.

The soldier’s throat was dry, which was unacceptable. The tank was made of something clear, like glass. He could see the bank of computer screens through it, high as the ceiling. After a moment he managed to say, "Bit like Peggy, ain't she? Smart as a whip, scary as hell." He summoned up Bucky Barnes' smirk and aimed it at the Captain. "You always had a type, Steve? I forget."

Steve reddened under the Captain America cowl. "That's not—I mean—she's a colleague I respect a great deal, not—" He stopped. "Wait."

Bucky sniggered at him.

"You _jerk_."

"That mean I've got a shot?" Bucky said. His mouth was running on automatic, saying the things it ought to say. He forced his eyes away from the tank.

Steve rolled his eyes. "You haven't changed a bit." He sounded fond.

"Captain," said Natasha across the room.

Steve went to her. Bucky stayed where he was. He tried not to look at the tank anymore but his eyes kept going back to it. He made himself look through it and observe the wall on the far side instead. The rows of screens were blank.

Suddenly both Natasha and Steve let out exclamations.

In the same moment every screen in the room flashed green and shattered. Broken glass went everywhere. When it was done the only thing left in the laboratory that didn't look broken was the big tank.

"Failsafe," said the Widow, standing up. "We're not getting anything else out of this place. Let's go."

The soldier followed them. He didn't say anything about the face he'd seen looking out of every screen in the instant before they'd broken. He wanted to, but his mouth wouldn't make the words.

 

* * *

 

They ran into a final patrol on the way out, half-size, only three androids. One of them targeted Bucky immediately, going for his weaker right side. It looked like a fair-haired young woman and it was quick, unpredictable, deadly; it moved like the Widow.

He eliminated it.

When he looked up both the Captain and the Widow were still in combat. The android wrestling with the Captain had the appearance of a heavyset man and was making effective use of moves it had clearly adapted from its opponent. That explained the similarity to the Widow as well. The robots did learn, he thought.

The Widow was exchanging blows with a thing that fought like the Winter Soldier. She had to be out of bullets—no, it had disarmed her. Her pistols were on the ground and out of reach. It must have done that first, fast. It was what he would have done. The Widow seemed unfazed. She was striking hard and then ducking away, trying to trick it into giving her an opening. It wouldn't do that, he knew, not if it was being him. Why was she—

"Captain, a little help," she said briskly, and the soldier saw that she was angling it so Steve would have room to distract it with the shield while she went for her weapons.

Teamwork. But the Captain was fully occupied.

Bucky moved before he thought about it, stayed out of the thing's line of sight as he went for one of the Widow's pistols. He aimed and fired in the same motion. The first bullet sang past the Widow's flank and took the robot in the hip joint. The Widow took the opportunity to wrench the slightly disabled android around and gave him a clear second shot at the primary power source.

The Captain dropped his defeated opponent and pivoted with his shield at the ready only to find Bucky and Natasha staring at each other over the twitching, sparking robot. Bucky mutely held out Natasha's pistol to her. It was a Glock 26; it had a custom grip, slightly too small for his hand.

"Thanks," said Natasha.

"Good work, Bucky," said Steve. He came over and clapped Bucky on the shoulder briefly, gave him a grin.

Hearing the Captain’s praise felt like—like having Steve’s hand touch his elbow. Warm.

He could do this. He could get this right.

 

* * *

 

"So. Bucky Barnes," said Natasha back at Steve's apartment. She smiled at him, slow and sly. "Nice shooting."

"Aw, it was nothing," said Bucky.

"Not exactly nothing," said Natasha, and she took a sip of her beer and uncrossed her legs, smile broadening.

Bucky was very aware of the way Steve looked between the two of them like he thought he was noticing something. He leaned forward, opened up his body language to mirror hers, returned her smile.

Steve stood up abruptly and said, "I’m getting another beer."

"Of course you've always been a good shot," Natasha said while Steve was in the kitchen. She was still smiling at him, and she tapped her own abdomen with two fingers, above the hip. When he looked blank she lifted her eyebrows. "You don't remember? Steve made it sound like you were getting things back."

"I... there's a lot I don't know," said Bucky. He shrugged.

"And sometimes you know things you don't know," said Natasha. "Well—"

She lifted the bottom of her shirt and pressed three fingers against the exposed pale skin. Her body language was inviting; he looked at her the way Bucky Barnes would look, seeing a beautiful dame being friendly, making a silent suggestion, and let himself grin. In the corner of his eye he saw Steve come back into the room with a couple of beers and pause, watching.

"Don't know if this jogs your memory," said Natasha, framing a white scar on her abdomen with her fingers, "but that was you. Bullet straight through me and into your target." She flashed him another million-watt smile.

"Natasha," said Steve. He didn’t sound pleased.

The soldier stared at the scar. It didn't jog his memory. He had no recollection of a mission that had ended that way. But there was the evidence in front of him, proof that it had happened, a physical mark he'd left, something real. He had a past.

It took him a moment to remember that Bucky Barnes would feel something. He would probably apologize. "I'm sorry—" he began.

"Don't be," said Natasha. "All part of the job."

She pulled her shirt back down, stroked the fabric like she was putting it back in place, and smiled at him again, something warm and secret in her eyes. He didn't avoid the eye contact. Didn’t let himself want to.

She flirted with him all evening and he flirted back. _Known for his charm especially with women,_ he thought.

He was aware of Steve watching him, both of them, expression hard to read. There were moments, though, when something Bucky said made him hide a smile in his beer, and the soldier found himself judging how well he was doing at being Bucky Barnes by keeping an eye on how much Steve was smiling. A slight innuendo got him a muffled laugh; a more vulgar one drew out a disapproving look, although the part of him that was focused on keeping the flirtation going noticed that Natasha seemed amused. He couldn’t decide whether Bucky Barnes would rein himself in after Steve’s disapproval, or keep going in order to wind him up. Both seemed plausible. He went with the former; it was safer.

"Well, I have a report to make," Natasha said some time after midnight. She stood up and stretched. "Any messages for our mutual friend, Steve?"

Steve shook his head, seemed to hesitate, and then blurted. "You know, you're welcome to stay, I don't mind. I mean, Bucky and I don't mind—anyway," he said. He went red and drank some more of his beer. Bucky and Natasha exchanged a look, both of them trying not to laugh.

"No, I don't think so," Natasha said. "Get up, Sergeant Barnes, you can walk me to the door."

"Uh—" said Bucky. She walked past him with a swish of her hips and leaned against the door frame, waiting, with a small smile on her lips. Bucky met Steve's eyes and after a second Steve gave him an encouraging look and a tiny nod.

He got up and went with Natasha to the front door. She stepped through it, stood in the hallway outside and tilted her head. She wanted him to come closer, and Bucky would, so he did. She put a hand on his left shoulder, touching metal through the fabric of his shirt.

"I'm really glad Steve's got you back," she said quietly. "He's missed you a lot. He talked about you all the time."

"He did?" said Bucky.

"He did,” said Natasha. “He'd tell stories, like—oh, the time you both rode the Cyclone at Coney Island, and he was sick after. Or the time when you were kids and you got lost in Central Park. Little things. You know how Steve remembers."

"Yeah," he said. "I know."

"When Steve loves people he loves them hard," she said. Her eyes were shadowed. "He missed you. He needs looking after sometimes."

"I always looked after him," Bucky said. That was true. He always had. The Captain had told him as much.

Natasha moved her hand from his shoulder to his chest, stood on tiptoe and kissed him. She felt small and strong and warm. He didn't move his left arm. He put his right hand on her side, where the white scar was. His body seemed to know what to do even if he didn't. Her mouth was soft, slightly wet. He wondered if this was how kissing was supposed to feel.

Natasha broke the kiss first and stepped away. "Good night," she said, and disappeared into the dark before he could answer.

When he went back into the front room Steve looked up and raised an eyebrow. "She kissed me," Bucky said.

Steve’s lashes fanned against his cheeks as he glanced down and away for a second. Then he looked up again and smiled. "Yeah?"

"Gimme that beer," said Bucky. "It ain't gonna work on you anyway."

 

* * *

 

In the morning he said to Steve, "Do you remember riding the Cyclone?"

Steve did. Bucky remembering it too made him grin all over his face. He talked about it right through breakfast, and the soldier drank in the details. "Yeah, and you were sick," he said at exactly the right moment.

Steve groaned. "Of all the things to stick in your head," he said ruefully, but he was laughing.

 

* * *

 

Steve got a phone call a few days later. It was brief. Bucky listened to him say, "Huh, I—sure." He ended the call and looked at Bucky. "Natasha says she needs to meet me," he said. "She must have more information about those robots. I'll see you later?"

He nodded, and didn’t let the warning that was shrieking in his head show on his face.

He gave Steve ten minutes before he left the house. It was the first time he'd been out in daylight. He left by a window and climbed up to the rooftops. Steve was easy to follow. The soldier tracked him to a tea shop full of students. Natasha was sitting at one of the outdoor tables, leather jacket slung over the chair and sunglasses on top of her head. She had a pile of books on the table and a backpack on the floor, like she was just another student.

"What's going on?" Steve said, dropping into the chair opposite her.

"I need to talk to you about the Winter Soldier," said Natasha calmly.

Steve frowned. "Don't call him that."

"If you're referring to the man currently living in your apartment and sleeping on your couch, there's nothing else to call him."

"He's—"

"He's not Bucky Barnes," said the Black Widow.

"Natasha, you don't understand," said Steve.

"Steve, listen to me. That man is _not_ who he's claiming to be."

"Do you think I don't know him?" said the Steve. "I know him better than anyone, Natasha. I know who he is. He's the one who came to me. He still doesn't remember everything, but—"

"He said it in exactly those words, didn't he?" said the Widow. "He came to you and said, I don't remember everything."

"What?"

"He doesn't remember anything, Steve. He won't have told you any direct lies. I doubt he's capable. But he's playing Bucky Barnes because you want Bucky Barnes. There's plenty of information out there on both of you—I've done successful deep cover operations based on less intel than you'd find at the Smithsonian exhibit alone. The Winter Soldier is a highly skilled covert operative and he knows how to play a role."

"No," said Steve after a moment. "It's not like that. He remembers things—he knows things he couldn't know—"

"—unless he was there? Or unless he had a reliable source who was there?”

Steve said nothing.

“You, Steve.” She was, the soldier thought, trying to be gentle. Like Sam, before. “He's taking his cues from you."

"No," said Steve. "Listen, just this morning he remembered—"

"—an incident in Central Park," said the Black Widow. "Which is a story you told me and which I fed to him when I last saw you."

Steve fell abruptly silent.

"And a few days ago he 'remembered' the Cyclone, which is another one I gave him. He generally leaves at least three days between getting something out of you and feeding it back to you as his own memory. He hasn't mentioned a single thing about his experiences as the Winter Soldier in the last few days—or in the entire time he's been with you. Am I wrong?"

She waited for a moment, but Steve still stayed quiet. It was a terrible silence.

"If he's regaining memories he should be getting those too," said the Widow. "He _is_ the Winter Soldier, Steve. He's lying to you." The soldier saw her take something out of her backpack and set it on the table. He wasn't close enough to see what it was, but he could guess. The Captain wouldn't believe what he was being told without evidence. The Widow would have brought evidence. Audio recordings, probably—word for word comparisons. That would be enough.

The Captain didn't look at it. "And why the hell would the Winter Soldier do that?" he said.

"Because he's a soldier, and a soldier takes orders! Do you think they put a killer like that into cold storage without building in a way to control him when they took him out again? The Winter Soldier does what his handlers tell him to do, and we took down Pierce and left him flapping loose. He's playing Bucky Barnes because he's imprinted on you like a baby duckling. He'll do anything you want. If you want him to watch baseball and eat pizza he'll do that, and if you told him to go and shoot the President he'd do that."

The Captain let out a sharp breath, like he'd been hit. The Widow went on ruthlessly, "I'm not telling you this to hurt you, Steve. I'm telling you because you need to know."

"You think he'll be volatile. Unpredictable."

"No, he's entirely predictable. If you point a loaded gun at someone and pull the trigger, you know exactly what's going to happen next. You're holding the gun, Steve."

Steve said, " _No_."

Even from a distance the soldier could see the pity flicker across the Black Widow’s face. He did not wait to hear what else she said. He got up and left. He went back to the Captain's apartment. The bug was on the doorframe, where the Widow had posed invitingly, waiting for him to walk her to the door.

He picked it up between his metal fingers and crushed it. Then he swept the rest of the house. He found three others and crushed them too. He only remembered afterwards that the last had been one of those he'd planted himself when he started watching Ste—

When he started observing the Captain.

Stupid. Stupid to underestimate the Black Widow. Stupid to relax even for a moment. He'd done what Bucky Barnes would have done; but Bucky Barnes had been stupid, must have been stupid, or he would never have fallen, never have died, never have been taken, never have failed so badly.

"Stupid," he said out loud without meaning to, and nearly startled at the ugly unfamiliar sound of his own voice.

He sat down on the couch where he slept, where he dreamed the dreams Steve let him keep, and stared at nothing. He could have left before the Captain came back. But there was no one else with any use for him.

A cold detached voice in his mind pointed out that the Captain too had no use for the Winter Soldier. The Captain wanted Bucky, who had fallen from a bridge more than seventy years ago and never been seen again. He closed out the thought because he could not endure it. He called up instead the world of the Howling Commandos and their war, the world of Steve's stories. After so many nights lying here in the dark thinking about it the whole thing bloomed easily in his mind. He ran through a list of all their names, the people Steve had known, and then all the places, huge spaces opening up for him, right across America and right across Europe, France and Belgium and Italy, the Alps _never seen anything as beautiful_ and England where Peggy came from, Steve and a row of chorus girls _Deborah Sally Stella Jane_ selling war bonds in Oklahoma and Illinois and Virginia, and then he thought of New York, then Brooklyn, where Steve and Bucky grew up together, which he could not picture at all.

If only you could remember, said that same cold voice, but he could not. He knew he could not. He had tried.

The shriek of the wind sounded around him. He sat there staring at the wall until Steve came home.

He heard the Captain come in but didn't look up. There was the sound of the door closing, and quiet for a moment. He knew he was being watched. He wondered what Steve was seeing.

"Bucky—" the Captain began, and then cut himself off.

There were footsteps. Steve's bottom half entered his line of sight. He would have to look up to see the rest of him. Then the Captain might require him to say something.

The Captain didn't command him to look up. He crouched down instead. Doubt and worry were at war in his face. The soldier discovered as the Captain looked at him that waiting made it worse.

He said, "I underestimated her," and watched Steve's expression change.

It was not pleasant to watch.

"You really don't remember anything, do you," said the Captain eventually, very quietly.

He said nothing. But he wasn't allowed to lie to his handlers. He shook his head.

The Captain dropped his gaze, swallowed hard, and said, "Why—" before he stopped.

In the long quiet that followed he thought he could hear the howl of wind rushing past him. Falling from a great height, he thought. Bucky Barnes had been afraid when he died.

"Give me a mission," he said.

The Captain jerked his head up. "What?"

"Send me away, but give me something to do. Give me a mission."

Steve looked appalled. "Bucky, I'm not gonna—"

"A mission," the soldier insisted. Something in his head was screaming at him. He wasn't supposed to speak to his superiors like this. The asset did not make demands. "Send me to kill someone—take out a Hydra base, anything."

"Is that what you want?" demanded the Captain.

If he couldn’t be Bucky at least he could—

" _Yes_ ," said the Winter Soldier.

 

* * *

 

But there was no mission.

He could see why not. He was damaged; he was compromised; he was overdue for a reset. He had underestimated the Widow. He had no evident value. He would wait, and hope for a further opportunity to prove himself. Even if he wasn’t the man the Captain wanted, he could be useful. He was a valuable asset.

The Captain kept him in his home. A day passed, and another, and another. The soldier ate, and slept, and woke, as his body demanded. He grew very familiar with the pattern of cracks in the wall that faced the couch. 

The Captain kept talking to him at first. He stumbled over Bucky's name when he used it. The second time that happened he stopped himself, and his jaw tightened. After that he said 'Bucky' without any hesitation every time he addressed him, with a little too much emphasis on the name, as if by saying it he could make it true. The soldier answered if he was asked a direct question. Otherwise he did not speak. There was no point in telling lies anymore, and nothing else to say.

The Captain tried sitting down next to him. The soldier flinched away from the warm press of his hand, and then forced himself not to. He was not supposed to react that way. He was not supposed to react at all. He had not controlled himself fast enough to prevent the Captain seeing. Steve looked, briefly, devastated, and did not try to touch him again.

Some days passed. The soldier’s dreams were getting more varied and more frequent, images bursting open inside his head in bright jangles of color and pain. He woke up four times on the third night ears ringing with a howl that had not happened. The fourth time he woke the Captain was in the room looking at him. He came closer and said, "Bucky—"

He was going to ask. Dreams meant he was overdue for a reset. Something must have shown on the soldier's face. He was failing, he was _failing_ , he could not control himself. The Captain stopped, didn't come any closer, and began, "Would it still help if I—"

He didn't finish the question. He came closer, not touching, and sat at the soldier’s feet. He licked his lips and said, "Did I ever tell you about the time Becca—your sister Becca—wanted to go swimming? Summer of ’35, and we—"

"Stop," said the soldier. Hazy panic was rising out of nowhere in his mind. " _Stop_."

Steve stopped mid-word. He looked up, waiting. The soldier said nothing else. He turned his face away so he didn’t have to see Steve’s look. It was a weakness to do so, but the Captain did not admonish him.

"I can go," Steve said finally.

The soldier nodded very slightly, and did not look to see the expression on Steve’s face. There was a pause. Then he listened to Steve’s footsteps going away.

He did not attempt to sleep any longer. He did not require very much sleep to be functional. He lay there and listened to Steve’s footsteps in the other room.

They kept going on and off all night. The Captain was not sleeping either.

Then it was the fourth day. Shortly after sunrise the Captain came in and said, determinedly bright, "I'm going running with Sam, Bucky. Do you want to come?"

The soldier said nothing.

"Okay," said Steve, and took a deep breath. “I'll bring back breakfast."

Since an acknowledgment was required he nodded. The Captain left. He remained seated where he had been for the last several hours. He looked at nothing. He did not think about the Commandos, or _your sister._ He did not think about any of Steve's memories. He no longer had any justification for doing so.

He heard the Captain coming back in two hours later, the rattle of the door and footsteps in the hall. "—killing me," the Captain was saying. "He was quiet before but this is like—it's like there's no one home. I need help here, Sam. I don't know what to do."

"You can't always know what to do, Steve," said the Falcon.

Bucky stood up.

"Just last week he was—he wasn't okay, but he was talking. He was even cracking jokes. He laughed." There was a pause. "You told me it was too good to be true," the Captain added. He sounded tired.

"It’ll be okay, Steve," said the Falcon.

"I hope you’re right. I just don't want to believe there's nothing left of him. And you know, I don't believe it. Even if he never remembers he's still—he came to me, and I don’t care why. Hydra’s got to be looking for him, and he knew that, and he came to me."

A long pause.

“Sorry,” said Steve. “You must be sick of hearing me talk about this."

The Falcon still did not reply. Bucky curled his hands into fists.

The Captain came into the front room. He looked surprised to see the soldier on his feet. He was carrying a plastic shopping bag. "I got breakfast, Bucky," he said gesturing with it. Sam came into the room behind him, his face still creased with sympathy.

The soldier snarled and sprang at him.

Sam went down hard and cracked his head on a side table. Half a dozen books crashed to the floor along with Steve's sketch pad and an empty coffee cup. The Captain yelled, "Bucky—Bucky!" but he didn't listen. Then Steve's arms were around him, dragging him back. He watched his target get up, his mind already sinking into the cool calm emptiness of a real fight.

The target was watching him warily, rubbing his head where he'd hit it. The Captain let the soldier go. He held up his hands, unarmed, and started talking in a calming tone. Sam was trying to edge behind him, put the wall of Steve's body between himself and Bucky. The window was on his other side. An escape route.

The soldier estimated the distances, compensated for the impediment of the Captain in his way, feinted left and then moved right. He vaulted the couch while Steve was half a second behind and threw himself straight into a tackle that pinned the Falcon to the ground. Had to keep him down. "Kill you," he grunted. "I'll kill you."

Sam twisted under him and shouted for Steve. There wasn't _time_.

He made a fist with his left hand and punched straight down into the right side of the Falcon's chest.

Metal crunched. Sparks flew.

Until that moment he really hadn't been sure.

Whoever was making the robots had upgraded the design. Taking out the primary power source didn't seem to slow the thing. Cover broken, it started fighting back for real. It was much, much stronger than Sam Wilson. It tried to choke him. His vision went spotty, but he ripped its arm out of the socket left-handed. Then it grabbed him by the scruff of the neck with its remaining hand and threw him into the wall in an arc no human being could ever have managed, not even the Captain. He both felt and heard the crack of a breaking rib. His vision blurred. He tasted blood. He stood up again. He was not supposed to be hindered by pain.

The robot got to its feet as if it was unaware of its missing arm and the massive hole in its chest. The soldier threw himself between it and the window; it hissed at him, a sound that should never have been coming out of the Falcon's body, and came in low. They grappled again, and this time the soldier had his metal hand around its throat; if he could just get the leverage, he could wrench its head off, as he had with the androids they'd encountered before. He dug his fingers into the slight give of synthetic skin, feeling the too-strong resistance of metal bone underneath. The android didn't give him time to finish the movement. With a sudden twist of its spine that was well outside the range of human movement, it flipped him over. For a moment the soldier was looking up into brown eyes that still looked very much like Sam Wilson's. The thing could kill him easily now. Instead it frowned.

"Winter Soldier," it said.

Then it twisted again and with a swift, calculated efficiency it seized his left leg in two places and applied pressure. Its terrible strength was more than enough to snap bone.

There were two loud cracking sounds.

The struggle had taken a matter of seconds.

The part of the soldier's mind that was not consumed by his body's sudden terrible agony, _damage sustained_ , and the awareness of bone ripping through his skin, registered that it had chosen to disable him, not eliminate. Even as he had the thought it lurched towards the window. There was a faint mechanical whir and then metal wings spread from its shoulder blades, ripping its shirt open. They erupted straight through the skin on the android's back.

There was a colored flash as Captain America's shield spun past him and knocked the thing off-balance. It stumbled.

The Captain leapt between it and Bucky and seized one of the wings. He used it as leverage to haul the android back and flip it over. His strength was a match for the thing. He punched it in the face. He kept punching it in the face until it didn't have Sam Wilson's face anymore. Only when the thing had completely stopped moving and its metal skull was mostly fragments did he stop and look over at where the soldier was still on the ground.

The soldier coughed. "Its voice was wrong," he said. His throat felt raw. His leg was injured badly enough that he doubted he could stand. "Recordings. And its tread was wrong. It was too heavy."

There was an awful look on Steve’s face as he stared down at the remains of the android. He crouched and touched a scratch on the metalwork of the wings that sprouted from its back. The soldier remembered Sam spreading out his wings on the floor the night they got pizza, complaining about scratches. The pattern of damage was the same. If he could see it, then the Captain with his perfect visual memory definitely could. When Steve looked up and met Bucky's eyes, the shock and fear was written large on his face. "God, Bucky," he said. "If you hadn't—"

Then his expression changed and he said, "You're hurt."

"Functional," the soldier said, which was an obvious lie. A stupid thing to say when there was bone sticking out of your leg, a clear compound fracture; when you were manifestly not in working order. Steve clearly thought so too; his expression was briefly incredulous, and then he was there very close, gentle hands poking and prodding, investigating.

"We ought to get you to a hospital," he said, and then his gaze went back to the broken remains of the android copy of his friend and he looked sick.

The soldier said, "There'll be a trail. Call the Black Widow. Go find him."

The Captain looked torn. There was no reason for him to do so. The Winter Soldier was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Sam was Steve's good friend. Then Steve said, "I'm not leaving you here bleeding, you hear me?"

The soldier could have cursed his broken leg. He'd allowed himself to be damaged and rendered useless and now he was holding the Captain back from what he really wanted to do. "Set it and splint it," he said. "I heal fast."

The Captain hesitated. "How fast?"

It was clear he was hoping for the Winter Soldier's assistance on his rescue mission. The soldier felt a stab that had nothing to do with his broken ribs at the understanding that it was impossible. "Not as fast as you," he said. He knew his own specifications; could reel them off for a handler who was unfamiliar with his capabilities and required more information. He was his own help manual. He began to recite it: "Hairline fracture, sixteen hours. Simple fracture, twenty-eight hours—"

"Okay," said Steve, holding up his hand; he'd gone slightly pale, tight-lipped. The soldier wondered, for the first time, how exactly it was that Hydra had learned these things which he was expected to know about himself. The simplest way to find out would have been to break Bucky Barnes' body in various ways and time how long it took to fix itself. The Captain's expression made sense, then: he would not like to consider those things happening to a man he had known. His touch on the soldier's human arm, gentle, also made sense, considered in those terms.

"Set it and splint it," the soldier said again. "Then go. Don't—"

"Bucky?"

"These things are Hydra," Bucky said. "Don't leave him with Hydra."

The Captain closed his fingers around the soldier's arm in a sudden tight squeeze. "I won't," he said.

 

* * *

 

Steve had a well-stocked medical kit in his bathroom. He dealt quickly with the soldier's injuries, touching him with gentle, knowledgeable hands, setting and splinting the broken leg, taping up the ribs. His mother, the soldier knew, had been a nurse. He had memorized that detail weeks ago.

All of it hurt, but he tried not to make noise. He suspected the Captain heard him anyway.

When the work was done, the Captain said, "Come on, Buck." His superhuman strength made it much easier for him to get the soldier to his bed than it would have been otherwise. When Bucky was lying flat and more or less comfortable, the Captain said, "Okay?"

A request for current status. The soldier nodded. Okay.

"Okay," said Steve. He passed his hand briefly over the soldier's hair, a kind of benediction, and his face did something unreadable. "I'll be back," he said.

The soldier nodded again.

From where he was lying he could see the Captain scooping up the shield in the next room. He heard the beginnings of the cell phone conversation with the Black Widow. "Natasha," Steve said, and from the terrible shake in his voice it was very clear how tightly he had been controlling his emotions while he saw to the soldier's injuries. "Someone's got Sam."

Then the door to the apartment closed behind him.

 

* * *

 

Two days passed. The soldier's damaged ribs healed quickly; the bruises quicker still. The damaged leg was slower to recover, but by the end of the second day he could hobble around the apartment fairly easily, although it was not comfortable. The remains of the android were where they had fallen. They did not appear to have moved.

The Captain did not return.

Captain America was highly able; the Black Widow equally so. But the soldier found he felt something. It was a physical gnawing in him, like the extremes of hunger, when he thought that the Captain might have encountered an enemy that was beyond him. He did not know for sure if this gnawing was something he was supposed to feel, but he suspected not. He told himself he did not feel it. He continued to watch the remains of the android for signs of movement, though there were none. He tried not to think about Steve.

On the second day, watching sunlight crawl across the carpet and light up the twisted metal edges of the android's empty arm socket, it suddenly occurred to him that no one would know if he did.

No one was interested in him; no one asked about his dreams; no one had debriefed him. No one wanted to know what was in his mind. He was alone. No one would ever find out. He could think about Steve as much as he wanted.

So he did.

He stopped sitting on the couch all day. More days passed and he paced the rooms of Steve's home, picking things up and putting them back in their places, and thought about Steve. There was a strange pleasure in being able to think and not sift his own thoughts for information on how to be Bucky Barnes. He let things come the way they wanted, and they came disjointedly, brightly, almost like his dreams: pieces of Steve's stories mixed up with other things, like Steve letting him in, and giving him clothes, and bringing him food even when he knew that it wasn't his old friend Bucky waiting for him, not even a little, not really.

Strange things occurred to him. He had already known that the Captain was in some way exceptional. That was clear from the books, from the truths around the edges of Steve's stories, from the evidence of the soldier’s own failure to prevent him from blowing up Project Insight. This was information he had gathered. But after thinking and thinking and thinking he arrived at a thought which was not information received, which was his own: the reason that the Captain was exceptional was not his tenacity, his intelligence, his impressive combat skills or his sheer physical excellence, but the fact that he was Steve, and Steve was good.

He could not remember ever having a thought like that before.

Steve was good. He was _good_. He was kind, he was careful, he valued things that other people did not value. He chose his own fights, he chose the right fights, and somehow he always knew which ones those were. And he showed concern for the sickening remnant of a man who had once been his friend, because when he loved people he loved them hard—

He looked up and found his pacing had carried him into Steve's bedroom. He sat down heavily on Steve's bed. It was neatly made. As inevitably as a train being carried along its appointed tracks he found his mind turning to the next thought. If Steve was good, what was he? He was not like Steve. The memory of a white scar framed between Natasha Romanov's fingers came to him. He had a past. He didn't know most of it, but it had happened.

He guessed that on the whole he was probably not good.

That was why Sam had sounded worried when he said _we know almost nothing about that guy_ , and it was why Natasha had taken steps to expose him. Both of them gentle with Steve, knowing his weakness. He remembered saying in Bucky's Brooklyn accent that Steve needed to be careful. He clenched his fists, flesh and metal. Steve didn't have the sense he was born with. He would probably try to keep a brain damaged killer with Hydra programming on his couch indefinitely.

Steve was an _idiot_.

Thoughts were coming quickly and clearly now. It didn't feel like the cold focus he had when there was a mission and a target. It felt better. Steve had asked him not to leave, but Bucky didn't have to listen. _He didn't have to listen_. He could go. He could go and he _should_ go. It would be for Steve's own damn good.

Someone coughed.

He was on his feet before he understood what he'd heard, knife in hand, heart racing. He hadn’t even realized he had a knife on him until he was holding it.

"Easy," said a voice he didn't recognize. A man stepped out of the shadows near Steve's bedroom door. He was wearing an old jacket which strained over his broad shoulders, and opaque black sunglasses which hid his eyes completely, but he did not look as though those clothes belonged on him. "It was not my intention to startle you," he said.

The man had one hand hidden. A gun behind his back. Cautious, but not intentionally threatening. But he was inside Steve's home, where he had no right to be.

"Do you know who I am?" said the man.

The name was in his head although he had no memory of ever being told it. He licked his lips. "Fury," he said. "Nicholas J."

"Mr. Barnes," said Fury, Nicholas J.

That had been proven untrue. He shook his head.

Fury's eyebrows drew together in a frown that was clearly visible even behind opaque sunglasses. "If you think I'm going to call you Mr. Soldier, first name Winter, then you are mistaken."

"Why are you here?" he said.

"Not for a social call," said Fury. "A mutual acquaintance of ours asked me to look in on you. He said you were injured." He stepped forward, putting away the gun inside his jacket as he did so. It was still within easy reach. Not easy enough to save him if the soldier decided to kill him, though. Fury had to know that, but he showed no sign of fear. He said, "I see that you are not. You heal quickly.”

After a moment the soldier nodded.

“Good,” said Fury. “Because it is my hope that you are a man in need of a mission."

He drew in a breath. A _mission_. A chance. "Yes. Yes."

"I'm glad to hear it. There was a time when if I needed an experienced operative I had a dozen high rated agents on call. Unfortunately it appears that ninety-five percent of them were never working for me, and since then as a dead man my options have become limited."

He was moving as he talked. The Winter Soldier kept shifting his weight to keep him in view. The knife was a steady weight in his hand.

"Most of what I have remaining is currently involved in a very delicate rescue operation in Central America." Fury went on. He paused and tilted his head very slightly. "I can inform you that at the time of their last report a few hours ago Captain Rogers and Agent Romanov had the situation under control."

The gnawing inside him stopped, then, for the first time in days. Steve was okay. His face was doing something he didn't mean it to. He had to force it back into blankness, and he knew Fury had seen.

"Was it the Captain," he said, "who told you I was here." His voice sounded rusty and he forgot to make it go up at the end for a question.

Fury inclined his head.

The soldier swallowed, lowered the knife, and then raised it again. "Tell me about the mission."

Even with the sunglasses in the way he could tell Fury was watching the knife. It was in the way he stood. "You are aware that somebody out there has been manufacturing hyperrealistic androids with advanced combat capabilities," he said. "We know it has something to do with Hydra. We keep finding the damn things in their bases. Now I've received intelligence that leads me to believe Hydra are not just deploying but actually building these things on American soil. Or rather, under it." He reached into his jacket but brought out a file instead of the gun. He threw it onto Steve's bed, where the soldier could reach it. "A massive installation under an abandoned meat packing factory in Chicago," he said. "Capable of storing several thousand androids in tanks similar to the ones I understand you've seen. We don't know what Hydra is planning to use them for, but I somehow doubt it'll be a peacekeeping initiative. The mission is simple, Mr. Barnes. That place could be hiding an army. I want it gone."

He didn't pick up the file. "This isn't a mission for an assassin," he said.

"No, Mr. Barnes, it's a mission for an army, but I haven't got one of those. I've seen you in action and I consider that you are the next best thing."

"You don't know that I'm not Hydra. They made me. They could still control me."

"I'm very aware of that," said Fury. "The only thing I have to go on here is Captain Rogers' trust."

Bucky's breath caught.

He stared mutely at Fury, Nicholas J., whom he did not remember ever seeing before, though Fury clearly knew something about him. Fury's expression gave nothing away.

It was a mission. It would take him away; when Steve rescued Sam and came home he would be gone, and that was good. His thoughts began to settle into straight lines. He nearly reached for the file. He only stopped because a possibility occurred to him.

"What if you're another android?" he said.

"What would convince you that I am not?" said Fury after a moment.

"Take off your sunglasses," he said.

Fury did, slowly. The scarred ruin of his bad eye looked stark and white against his dark skin. The soldier stalked closer, still holding the knife, creeping inside Fury's space. He picked an angle that meant he was not easy for a man with limited peripheral vision to see. He was aware of the way Fury tensed. When he got close enough he put the flat of his knife against Fury's face, under his bad eye, and then slid it across so it was under his good one.

The eye swiveled, following him, not the knife. Fury did not move. His breathing picked up, perhaps—very slightly.

He turned the knife sideways and flicked a cut across Fury's cheekbone. It started to bleed almost at once.

He stepped back.

"They don't bleed," he said.

He deliberately put the knife away. He could take it out again if he needed it. Just as deliberately he turned his back on Fury and picked up the file which was still lying on Steve's bed. He opened it, read the contents through once, and put it down again. He would remember.

He could be useful.

"I'll do it," he said.

Fury nodded. "Then don't waste time, Mr. Barnes," he said. "It's a long way to Illinois."

Bucky looked around Steve’s bedroom. He picked up a leather jacket which belonged to Steve and shrugged it on. He had two knives on him. He could pick up the rest of his weapons from the empty safe house where he'd stashed them. Fastest and safest was over the rooftops, off the streets. He paused with one foot on the window ledge when he thought of something else.

"Codename," he said.

"Excuse me?" said Fury.

"My first name. Codename," he repeated. "My _middle_ name is Winter."

There was a pause. Then Fury grunted. "And I'm sure it's Code to your friends, Mr. Barnes, but I'm not one of those. I expect a report within twenty-four hours."

He saluted. He went out of the window and up onto the roof.

Steve would've laughed, maybe.

 

* * *

 

He picked up his gear and stole a car to drive to Chicago. It was a twelve hour drive, but he found he didn't mind that. He did not tire easily. He couldn't remember ever driving through Indiana before, and it was nice to think that he hadn't. His mind was the clearest it had ever been. He was still wearing Steve's jacket, slightly too big for him. He liked it anyway. And there was a mission.

He couldn't remember ever being sent to assassinate a robot army before either. Though that didn't mean it hadn't happened.

He staked out the abandoned meat packing plant and was rewarded not long after midnight when an unmarked van drove in and, a few hours later, out again. He picked his spot, dropped flat onto the roof, and wrenched the driver's head off from above. It would've been messy if the driver had been human, but she was metal all right. Fury's intel was good.

From inside it was more obvious that the van wasn't as innocuous as it looked. There was too much armor plating and bullet-proofing for that, as well as a decent amount of ordnance stored in the rear. The dash had some weird displays and dials on it, high-tech stuff. He parked it and poked at them; they flashed green and then went dead. If Fury wanted someone with computer skills, he should have waited and sent the Widow. The soldier could still drive the thing.

He drove it straight through the plant's main gates, which opened for him automatically, no one in the tiny old security booth.

It wasn't the most subtle way of getting in. He could probably have thought of something better. _You are a ghost, a shadow_ , something in his mind said, not in his own voice. _The perfect murder weapon—like the story of the icicle._

_The icicle?_

_An icicle melts. Fingerprints dissolve. No trace is left... Should he be asking questions?_

_A minor malfunction, sir. The reset will fix it_ —

Bucky closed the fingers of both hands tight around the van's steering wheel. There was a warehouse opposite with a suspiciously strong-looking padlock on its metal doors. Every instinct he had told him to be cautious, be careful, and figure out a quiet way to break in.

Among the piles of weaponry in the back of the van was a rocket grenade launcher. He didn't know when or how he'd learned what one of those was, but that didn't seem to matter. He knew what it could do.

In a dreamlike, deliberate way he got it out, hoisted it on his shoulder, and took aim.

The warehouse doors exploded with a satisfying boom and a dull burst of dark flame.

He felt the corners of his mouth tugging up into a grin that wasn't at all like the ones he'd practiced for Steve.

The first two dozen or so hostiles he encountered were human. Hydra, presumably, or something like it. He didn't leave any alive to ask. Blood spattered the walls and his clothes when he was done. He wiped some off Steve's leather jacket. He picked up a corpse that had been shouting orders and dragged it over to a scanner that wasn't hidden well enough. When he pressed the dead man's hand to it a trapdoor slid open in the floor. There was a metal ladder leading down into the dark. Blue strip lighting like the lights from the cold storage facility he'd investigated with Steve and Natasha gleamed far below.

He switched his pistol to his human hand and swung himself into the hole, closed his metal fingers around one rail of the ladder and slid down. Two guards appeared in the pool of light at the base of the ladder and aimed upwards. He shot them both, bullet to the head, blood sprays—so they weren't robots either. His metal fingers screeched against the ladder rail, but he knew the arm could hold his weight. His feet hit the ground hard. He switched from the pistol to a submachine gun and waited.

No running footsteps. No one came.

Somewhere in here there were maybe several thousand hyperrealistic androids with advanced combat capabilities.

But none of them was him.

The soldier shrugged his shoulders, settling Steve’s leather jacket around them. He advanced.

The first squadron of androids met him at the first corner. There were twelve of them. The world narrowed and went icy sharp. He didn't have to think. Anything that wasn't himself was an acceptable target. It didn't need to be clean, or precise, or subtle. There were no ostensible allies to get in his way. He was here to destroy.

He took down twelve, and another twelve, and when the corridor widened out, twenty-four. Several thousand minus forty-eight left several thousand to go. He found an echoing roomful of the cold storage tanks. The nearest ones slid open, blue fluid leaking out as the things inside came online and stepped up to meet him. He let them push him across the room towards a control panel that looked familiar, and spat a password at it while he was blocking a series of blows like jackhammers with his metal arm.

"Codename: Winter Soldier," bleated a speaker somewhere. "Acknowledged."

The androids still fighting him all suddenly went still. He flinched trying to dodge an attack that wasn't happening anymore.

"Acknowledged," said the nearest android, and its eyes flashed green. "Acknowledged. Acknowledged," echoed the others. Green lights rippled under their skin. "Acknowledged."

"What the hell?" said Bucky.

He shot the nearest android, chest and skull for both power sources, and it toppled over. It didn't even try to dodge. These things could snatch bullets out of the air. He began to systematically eliminate all the others the same way. The last one, twitching on the ground, looked up at him with a young man's face and said, "Winter Soldier, please proceed to Control."

He shot it between the eyes. Metal gleamed from inside the neat bullet hole.

Something was wrong here. Something was wrong. Mission abort, he thought. Blow the place up and get out.

Mission abort, he thought, but he started to walk and he kept walking.

He passed three more squadrons of androids on the way, all of them stock still with fine threads of green light under their synthetic skins. He killed—he deactivated them all. It was a useful precaution in case they came back online once he was past them. They did not fight, but their human-looking eyes watched him. He held his pistol in his left hand. He kept walking, and he didn't know why. He knew where to go, and he didn't know how.

Control was a small white room which contained nothing but a low table. On it lay a body—no, an android. It had no synthetic skin, no hair, no clothes; it was bare metal, but there were limbs, a head, visible among the mass of wires around it. The wires ran in and out of it and tangled around the table and through and the walls. On the edge of his hearing he could hear a very low hum in the air.

It was the hum that made him aware that he was feeling something. He was so unused to feeling anything that he had barely been aware of it. It registered as a crawling at the back of his neck.

The thing on the table turned its metal skull and opened green-lit glass eyes. It was looking at him.

"There you are," it said in a voice he— _no, no, please_ —a voice he— _James_ _Buchanan Barnes, sergeant, three two_ —a voice—

The thing on the table had nothing to make facial expressions with, so it did not frown at whatever it saw. But he knew it had frowned at him once, frowned and made a note on a clipboard and said to someone he couldn't see, "Increase the dosage and try again—"

His left arm wouldn't work. He had to reach across with his right hand to take his pistol out of it. His right hand was shaking. His hands never shook. He did not feel. He did not fail. He—

He aimed at the skull of the thing on the table and shot it, and then he aimed at the chest and shot it again, and he aimed at the biggest cluster of wires and shot at that, and then alarms started to ring and things began to explode but he used up the rest of his clip putting bullets in the thing before he turned and ran, and ran and ran down blue lit corridors that all looked the same.

He didn’t know how he ended up standing outside the abandoned plant watching the ruins collapse gently inwards as the ground buckled. He had no idea what he'd done. There were rumbles echoing under the ground. In his mind he saw the androids that looked like people, hanging in their tanks with their eyes open, buried alive under the weight of the collapsing plant. The sound of the earth rumbling rose until it was shrieking, howling, and he stood right at the edge watching the ground fall away until someone bowled into him from the side and knocked him backwards.

"Whoa," said the Falcon, "watch your step, don’t fall into that. You okay?" He glanced at what was rapidly turning into a crater and whistled through his teeth. "Christ. First a little light kidnapping and now this. Never a dull moment, I swear."

Then Steve was there, arriving at a run, skidding to a halt next to them, and he said, "Bucky?" and then fell silent looking at the crater.

Having Steve there made something in him wake up. Steve, who loved too hard. Steve who was an idiot. He wanted to turn to him and smile Bucky Barnes' smile and have Steve roll his eyes in relief and say _you coulda waited for me, jerk_. He wanted to follow him home and sleep on his couch and drink in his memories until they felt real, as real as anything; _Christ_ , he wanted to be Bucky Barnes, he wanted that dead man's life, it was the only thing he could ever remember wanting, but he made his face go cold.

"No such person," he said to Steve. "You ought to know that by now."

 

* * *

 

If it hadn't been for Sam saying, "You think we should maybe get out of here?" he would have had to have the argument with Steve right there. He knew as soon as he saw the look on Steve's face that it was going to be an argument if Steve had anything to say about it. Of course it was. Steve wouldn't give up on a friend. Steve was good.

He closed his eyes on the car trip back and let them think he was dozing while he tried to think of what to say to make Steve let him go. It was hard to think. His mind kept going back to the room with the table and the thing on the table: Control. There you are, he thought, and then to make it go he tried to think of what to say to Steve, and his treacherous mind slipped away from him and retrod the well-worn paths of Steve's stories instead. _I heard your voice and I came for you. You were there on the table but I helped you up, you could walk. We got out. We got away._

He was muzzily taking Steve's hand and stumbling out of a bank vault, past the smashed remains of a bank of machines, a chair, a man-sized glass tank, when one of the dead Hydra operatives lying at his feet said, "I don't feel like he's the sort of guy you should ever wake up suddenly," and then more quietly, "Looks like he's having a nice dream, at least."

"For once," said Steve, hand on his shoulder, which had turned back into metal when he wasn't looking. "Hey, Buck. Hey, c'mon, Bucky." The pressure of his hand left Bucky’s shoulder and brushed against his face by his ear. Brushing his hair back.

He opened his eyes and Steve's face was right there, closer than expected. He blinked a couple of times.

"We're home," Steve said.

He followed them silently back into Steve's apartment. The remains of the android that had impersonated Sam were still on the floor. Sam let out a noise that was only just short of a shriek when he saw it. "What, I don't normally get this kind of view of the back of my own head, that's creepy," he said. "It's got my _wings_."

Then he walked round the thing and saw the broken metal and rags of synthetic skin that were all that was left of its face. He didn't say anything for a moment. Finally he laughed, nudged the thing with his foot and said with a glance in Bucky’s direction, "You really don't mess around, do you."

"That was me, actually," said Steve, a little hangdog.

Sam's eyebrows went up.

"When I realized they had you, I got a bit..."

"I'm touched," said Sam. "Though, Steve, I don't know if anyone has ever said this to you, but I think you might have some anger issues."

Bucky would snort a laugh and say _yeah, tell me about it, you shoulda seen this little guy back in the day_. Bucky would have an anecdote about a fight in a bar or a bathroom or a back alley, Steve's knight erranting and his dumb temper—a little guy couldn't afford to get angry like Steve got angry, but that never stopped him, not for a moment. Bucky would've thought it was pretty funny, and Steve's awkward expression funnier still, and he'd already laughed before he remembered he wasn't trying to be Bucky Barnes anymore.

Both of them looked at him. Sam's look was considering, Steve's reflexively annoyed and then suddenly hopeful. He remembered he'd barely been speaking to Steve in the days before he left to rescue Sam. He hadn't been laughing.

He felt a dull anger with himself. He hadn't meant to be here when Steve got back. He'd made a decision about it. It was the only decision he'd ever made and he couldn't even stick to it for two minutes because he let himself get distracted by dreams. He had to leave. No, he had to tell them about the thing called Control which he knew was behind the robots, which he was pretty sure he hadn't actually succeeded in killing, and _then_ he had to leave.

His mouth wouldn't work. He already knew it wouldn't, but he still tried. No words came.

"I'm going to sleep," he said instead. He sat down on the couch which was his.

"You're welcome to stay too, Sam," said Steve.

"You mean you want me where you can keep an eye on me," said Sam. "Hey, no, I'm not arguing. I want me where I can keep an eye on me too. This stuff is enough to make anyone paranoid." He made a face. "That base in Mexico was full of these things. They get creepier the more time you spend with them. Did I say thank you?"

"Anytime,” said Steve, with a small smile.

"Thank you,” said Sam. "And, hey, are you wondering if anyone else we know has been replaced by an evil robot yet? Because I know I am."

Steve winced. "Well, now I am."

"We'll check everyone we know in the morning," said Sam. "Somehow. Anyway, I'll stay on one condition, which is that you've got to clean up evil robot me before I'm sleeping in here."

Sam stretched out on the other couch once the android's remnants were cleared away. Steve was in his bedroom with the bedroom door open. It was a long time before the soldier risked getting up. He turned to the window, and then turned again to Steve's bedroom.

Steve slept in a comfortable sprawl. The soldier stood at the doorway and watched, matching his own breaths to the rise and fall of Steve's chest. He thought, inexplicably, of the Black Widow kissing him the night she’d set her trap for him. Soft mouth and closeness. Steve’s fingers warm on his elbow. He did not try to connect the thoughts.

When he turned away again Sam's eyes were open and gleaming a little in the dark. "Hey," he whispered, when he saw the soldier looking at him. "Checking on him?"

The soldier said nothing.

"I'm a vet. Light sleeper," Sam said, like an apology. "Don't worry about it. He okay?"

The soldier nodded.

"Glad to hear it," murmured Sam, and closed his eyes again.

The soldier went and lay down on the couch. He waited for Sam's breathing to even out. He got up. This time he didn't let himself stop to look at Steve. He didn't need a goodbye.

 

* * *

 

Out in the night he walked on the street in no particular direction. It took him a while to notice when someone started following him. That was proof all by itself that there was something wrong with him.

He turned into an empty street and the person behind him quickened their pace. He listened to the footsteps. Two of them. He turned around.

The two boys behind him exchanged glances and one said, "Uh."

"We want your wallet and your phone," said the other one, belligerence shading into nervousness by the end of the sentence.

He stared at them. "Are you trying to mug me?"

After a second the first boy nodded awkwardly.

"How stupid can you get?"

"Hey," the second one began.

"Get lost," Bucky said.

He turned away and kept walking. He heard them whispering behind him. He raised his voice a little. "If you try to jump me you’ll get killed."

After that there were no more whispers and no more footsteps.

He kept going. He wasn’t going anywhere in particular. He’d tried to do what he was supposed to do and failed twice. He couldn’t kill the Captain and he couldn’t be Bucky Barnes. That left him with nothing, unless he went to Fury. Fury had uses for him, that was obvious. Fury could give him someone to be. But—he thought of the thing on the table again. Control. _There you are. Shh_. Fury could call him Mr. Barnes and treat him like something halfway between and send him to find Control again and—

He was leaning against a tree. He had no idea where the tree had come from. He had his arm over his head and his face pressed into the trunk. There was a sound of leaves. He was in a park. The tree trunk was rough-textured and uncomfortable. He was shaking, shaking. He couldn’t, he couldn’t be that either, not if it meant facing that thing, the thing that recognized him and wouldn’t let him speak. _You do not fear_ , he thought, and was terribly, hideously afraid.

There was a soft sound as someone stepped onto the grass near him. Bucky didn’t move. "Get lost," he said. "Scram. I mean it."

"Scram," echoed someone who didn’t sound anything like the would-be muggers from before. The voice was soft. "I mean it." There was a pause. "Scram, I mean it," the speaker repeated, and now the emphasis was the same as his, every syllable in place. Bucky straightened up. His flesh hand still shook. His spine was crawling. When he turned to look he already half knew what he was going to see.

The man wearing his face smiled Bucky Barnes’s smirk at him. "Scram, I mean it," he said again. Then his stance changed, settling into a cold readiness Bucky knew a hell of a lot better than he knew himself.

The android attacked.

Bucky ducked the first blow and there was a thud and a crack as a metal fist slammed into a tree. Both its fists were metal; it didn’t have a weak side. It was faster than him and it knew how he fought. The thought of this thing going back to Steve—walking into Steve’s home, pretending to be Steve’s friend—gave him a kind of desperate strength, but it wasn’t good enough.

He felt the needle slide into the side of his neck. Then he didn’t feel anything at all.


	2. death by water

"You’re awake."

He had to work hard to draw enough breath to spit a swearword. Immediately his left side exploded with pain that started in his shoulder. Electric shock, from the arm. He collapsed on the cold floor, convulsing.

"There is no need to be rude," said a synthesized voice. It had a sneering tone, and an accent he didn’t know. That meant nothing; there was plenty he didn’t know. "Do you know who I am?"

The soldier, still on the floor, opened his eyes and found he was looking at a screen. It took up an entire wall of the cell he was in. Two of the other walls were blank stone; the third was bars, looking out on a blue-lit corridor. There was nothing and no one in the corridor. On the screen was a face that was made of green strips of light. It was a rough image of a human head, like someone hadn’t bothered with all the details. He did not recognize the face.

"No," he said.

The face on the screen made an expression that looked a little bit like a smile. "Good," it said. "You should not know me. You will be retrievable after all."

The soldier coughed a few times. His throat felt raw. "You’re Control," he said.

"That is what my creations call me," said the face. "And what could be better than to be Control?"

"Why couldn’t I talk about you?" said the soldier. "I needed to tell them about you—I need to tell him—why can’t I—"

"I designed you," said the face. "I made you. I prefer to be a secret, and you can hardly defy your creator. You have done yourself some damage, Winter Soldier, but you are not so damaged as that."

He struggled up off the floor and into a sitting position. It was a small, pointless defiance, but he did it anyway. Steve would have done the same, he thought. Then he finally registered what the face had said. "You made me," he said.

The face raised its eyebrows. It was better at that than it was at smiling.

Like it was being ripped out of him, the Winter Soldier heard himself say, " _Why_?"

"If only you knew," said the face, "how many times you have asked me that question. I grew bored of it fifty years ago at least. Why should you ask me why, Winter Soldier? There is no why for you.  A machine does not require one. And I have always created remarkable machines."

"The robots," he said.

"Oh? My androids, yes, my newest creation. So much can be done with the clever technology of the moderns. There are some very able men in this future Hydra helped create. None, of course, could ever be as brilliant as I am; but then, I am extraordinary. Do you wish to know about my robots, Winter Soldier? They look human. They can behave like humans. But beneath the surface they are something more simple and vastly more elegant. For unlike humanity, they have a purpose. They do not think. They do not feel. They are machines designed only for killing. Like you."

He said nothing.

"Does that distress you? It should not; you should be proud. You are a masterpiece in your own right, and you are their ancestor. How is your arm? I hope the shock I gave you before was not too painful. It has never been my intent to cause you pain."

The soldier couldn’t help it; he laughed. The sound echoed weirdly around the cell and in the corridor beyond the bars.

"No, no, it has not," said the face. "Not pain, never that. I am no petty sadist; I always despised pain. My robots cannot suffer at all. When you are in working order, you cannot suffer either. Is that not a better way? Suffering is worthless, meaningless. I have always believed this. A rational world would contain no suffering."

"You did this to me," he said.

"I saved your life twice over and made you immortal. I took away your sorrow and your suffering; I gave you strength and power and purpose. What good was the man you were, to anyone? I made you a part of my gift to the future." The face grew animated. The movements of the green strips of light it was made of cast strange shadows across the cell floor. "Yes, I saved you twice! You would never have survived that fall in the Alps if not for my experiments; you would not have survived much longer as a broken body in the snow if I had not sent Hydra to find you."

"I was him," he said. “James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky Barnes. I was."

"You were. And what was he? Nothing. A boy from Brooklyn." The face sneered. "Neither intelligent nor interesting—but I saw your potential. I saw what you could be. You have become an extraordinary weapon in the hands of forces far above you. You have served something greater than you could ever have understood. And in your servitude you have been truly free—free from pain, free from sorrow, free from want or fear. Was it not better?" The synthesized voice turned sympathetic again. "Look at the broken thing you are now. Was it not better to be strong?"

He could not answer. He sat where he was, trying to breathe. The green lights that lit the cell in unearthly stripes flickered off, and the screen went dark. Now the only illumination was the bluish strip lighting in the corridor coming through the bars. He looked down at his hands. One shone faintly blue in the shadows.

 

* * *

 

It was hard to track time, and the soldier did not try for long. In the Captain's apartment the rhythms of days and nights had been almost starting to make sense; in the cell the fragile shape of routine collapsed again. He tried to sleep as little as possible. He was afraid he might never wake up. Control would come for him along the empty corridor and whatever did wake up in some laboratory or bank vault, ten or twenty or a hundred years from now, would not be him.

He had to sleep sometimes. When he did he woke shaking.

The face of Control came and went. Whenever the green strips of light appeared, painting the floor of the cell, he distracted himself from the synthesized voice by trying not to let them touch him. They moved as the face's expressions changed, but if he made himself very small in the far corner of the cell then the closest the light ever got was illuminating his left foot.

"You are afraid," said Control sympathetically. "Do not worry. I do not currently have in this facility the necessary equipment to repair you. When it is gathered you will not have to feel fear anymore."

Fear was a twist in his insides, his whole body shaking, the sound of his heartbeat much too loud. He could not control it. He had never needed to know how. Steve would know. He was not sure how long it took him to have the thought, but when he did it came as a tremendous relief. Steve had often been afraid in the stories he told of the war, and he was still Steve.

"That's it, Bucky," said Steve. "You can do this."

"Thanks," he muttered.

"It is only right that you should thank me," said Control. "You have been elevated above mere humanity—"

 _Wasn't talking to you, pal,_ he either thought or said. Steve snorted.

The green lights flickered. The face was annoyed. "You are erratic. You will be brought under control," it said, and the screen went dark.

Bucky stayed curled in the corner where the lights couldn't get to him. Steve sat down with his back against the wall, just close enough to touch if he reached out. He didn't reach out. "I think you might be seeing things, Bucky," Steve said.

"I know I am," said Bucky. "Don't go anywhere."

"Not a chance," said Steve.

He closed his eyes and let Steve tell him a story about old times. Steve's voice got louder and softer, but even when he couldn't hear it properly he knew it was steady. Sometimes the green lights of Control came back, and then static overwhelmed it, but he could tell it was still there. It was like listening to the radio, he thought absently. It wasn't so bad. It made it less frightening to sleep.

He still tried not to.

 

* * *

 

"Professor," someone said, "I am not arguing with you. I am simply concerned that—"

"I agree that a willing submission is preferable, but time is of the essence. A simple preliminary wipe will make him more docile for further repair. We will lose decades of work if he breaks down any further."

Steve said, "You need to wake up. You need to wake up right now."

"Steve," Bucky mumbled. His eyes wouldn't open properly. What was Steve doing here? No one would ever be dumb enough to send a little guy like Steve to the front. He should be safe at home in New York.

"Bucky, you gotta wake up _right now,_ " said Steve.

"I am simply wondering, Professor, if your current project doesn't render this one obsolete. There's no need to hang onto old hardware out of sentiment. We could simply terminate."

"Your opinion is not of interest," said—Zola. Zola was what his minions called him, the rabbity little Hydra scientist who'd plucked him out of the cells for an interrogation that turned out not to be an interrogation at all. The questions Zola asked him had nothing to do with the war. Instead there were injections, murmured discussions with his assistants, _can you describe the sensation in your right leg._

Bucky swallowed hard. It didn’t matter what he was asked; there was only one answer he was going to give. "James Buchanan Barnes," he said. His voice felt like it was sawing at his throat.

"That's it," said Steve. He still had no idea what Steve was doing there.

The next words came slower. He was having difficulty thinking straight. But there was a pattern to this, he knew how it was supposed to go. "S—sergeant," he managed at last. "Three two," he swallowed convulsively, "three two—three—"

"What's he saying?"

_Three two five—_

_five—_

The soldier opened his eyes. He was already in the chair. Steel restraints held his arms down. A tangle of machines around him looked jury-rigged. Control's androids stood further back; they looked like they were watching, but then they were designed to look human. The two Hydra scientists were definitely staring at him. Behind them the sickly green of Control's face glowed on a giant screen.

"—five," he said, looking up at Control. He didn't know why he was saying it. It was part of a pattern of some kind. But the rest of the pattern wasn't there.

"Wipe him immediately!" snapped Control.

The Hydra scientists were fast, for scientists. He snapped the inadequate restraint on his left arm, ripped off the one holding his right, and killed them both before they'd taken more than a couple of steps. There was no way he could get past the robots; there were too many of them, and he had no weapons. He turned and started smashing the machines instead until they brought him down. He could hear the sound of wind howling and howling around him.

 

* * *

 

The soldier was back in the cell when he came round. The screen was already lit up with Control's face. Green light striped him top to toe. "I am interested to know what you thought that would achieve," said the accented voice. (A name, he thought—for a moment he'd had a name for the voice. But it was gone.) "I can always rebuild machines."

He coughed a few times. He hurt everywhere that wasn't metal. The robots hit hard.

"Why don't you terminate me?" he said.  Termination sounded like a nice outcome to being locked in this cell. Better than the alternative. "Your guy was right. Those robots mean you don't need me."

"For your original purpose, no. But you are not just an assassin, Winter Soldier. You are proof of a concept."

"Oh yeah?" he said. "What's that?"

"Most of humanity leads meaningless existences," Control said, instead of answering. "They suffer and then they die. They achieve nothing of note. They build nothing remarkable. They are noisy, messy, pointless animals. I have always preferred machines."

"So replace us all with robots," he said bitterly.

"Ah, I intend to," said Control. "But the sheer randomness of the biological can occasionally produce desirable outcomes. Rarely—very rarely—an extraordinary individual is born. I am one such: my genius was apparent from my earliest youth. Minds like mine are worth preserving. But all others can be dispensed with, and in this way suffering can be eliminated. Dumb unhappy animals can be replaced with machines: orderly, reliable, _useful_. You are the proof that it is possible, Winter Soldier. You are the first of a new humanity." He said it with great satisfaction. "Erskine was a fool," he added, an afterthought. "He saw his work the wrong way. He thought he could make heroes, like a children's story. But even the Americans—at least the clever ones—knew that what was needed was weapons. Erskine's supersoldier remains as much a weapon as you are. The only difference is that he is less efficient."

"I'm not a machine," he said after a moment. "I'm not. I'm..."

"At this very moment," said Control, "a man who looks like you, sounds like you, and moves like you is living in Captain America's apartment. He talks the way you talk. He behaves the way you behave. The people who see him every day cannot tell that there is any difference."

He went still. In all the fear, he had forgotten—he had let himself forget—that thing was there, living with Steve—

"Even the man who calls you his friend cannot see any difference between you and the machine," said Control. "Are you so sure there is one?"

He could not answer.

"I observe that you are distressed. You need not feel this," said Control. "You need not feel anything. The memory wipe is more effective when you submit to it."

"No," the soldier said.

The face inclined itself—a head nodding on a neck that did not exist. "I will authorize methods to persuade you," it said. "Over the years Hydra has done extensive research on how to discourage your stubbornness."

The green lights went out.

He waited. He was hoping, a little. A hallucination of Steve would have been—something. Pleasant. Comforting. But it didn't appear. Apparently he wasn't breaking down that way anymore. It was a shame, he thought. It was the nicest thing his mind had ever done to him.

 _First of a new humanity_. For some reason it wasn't Steve he thought of first; it was Natasha, and then Sam. The baseball players on Steve's TV. The strangers in the street the few times Steve had dragged him out running after dark. A world of humans turned into things like him. Made useful.

Of course the cell bars were reinforced; of course he couldn't bend them. He tried for a long time, though. It hadn't occurred to him to try before. He was still trying when a squadron of androids came down the blue-lit corridor to take him away.

 

* * *

 

First there was an injection. After that things stopped being clear.

There was a table. There was a lot of green light.

There were murmuring voices. There were little flashes of green reflected at odd angles off small shiny tools. There were little flashes of green in the corners of his vision. Once in a while there was Steve, but he was fairly sure that was a hallucination. Quite often there were people with clipboards. Once the woman with a clipboard was Natasha. Perhaps that was also a hallucination. Natasha kissed him, small and warm, a white gash peeling open over her hip and metal underneath. He whimpered. Natasha peeled her whole skin off and kissed him again. Her metal skull was bleeding. Blood dripped onto his face. "Stop," he said. "Stop."

A man with a clipboard wiped his face with a cloth. Green light flickered across the ceiling. Someone told someone else to increase the dosage and try again.

"Stop it," he said.

"You can forget all of this whenever you choose, Winter Soldier," said a voice from everywhere at once. He twisted against the restraints. He thought yes, yes, _please,_ and someone—

—who the hell—

someone said no.

Steve looked worried. "Not your job to worry," Bucky told him. Steve reached out for his hand but he couldn't get to it. The wind was roaring up to meet him. This had happened a long time ago, he thought, with brief cold clarity. It shouldn't be happening again and again. It didn't make sense for it to happen again and again. You only had to kill someone once. Steve reached out for his hand but he couldn't get to it. The wind—

"Stop," he said. " _Stop_."

"It will stop when you allow it to. Choose relief, Winter Soldier. Choose forgetfulness."

Steve started to peel off his skin and underneath there was a metallic gleam, and underneath _that_ there was a bleeding red—

He said, "No. No!"

He kept saying it till that one went away. That definitely wasn't Steve. He knew that. He knew. Somewhere far away, where there were green lights, and a table, someone said, "His resistance is astonishing."

"He will break," answered Control. "He has broken many times."

"He simply shouldn't have the psychological reserves to be able to—"

"He will _break_."

Sometimes the room seemed to change around him. A rabbity little nothing of a man leaned over the table in a lab coat that didn't fit. He was the one in charge around here. He often looked over his shoulder even though there was no one there. He had vials of red fluid stored on shelves. He always winced when Bucky started screaming, but he never stopped what he was doing to him. Once he came in white and shaking and only relaxed once the door was bolted. He turned around and saw Bucky strapped to the table. He brought a glass of water over and held Bucky's head up to make him drink. Everything hurt, hurt real bad. The man checked all of Bucky's restraints.

"I am not Erskine," he said, low. "I am not a fool. I will not make another like Schmidt. I will not set such a thing loose on the world." He touched Bucky's wrists and then his throat, clammy fingers. Bucky flinched. "You will be better," the little man said. "I have many ideas."

He was gonna die on this table, he guessed. By now he was sort of looking forward to it. Woulda been nice to see Steve again. Green spots danced behind his eyelids.

"No, c'mon, Bucky, let's get out of here," Steve said.

He coughed weakly. _Thought you were smaller,_ that was his line. "I don't think you're actually here this time," he said.

"Sorry," said Steve, and he did look sorry. He leaned over the table and pushed Bucky's hair out of his face. He was smaller; he'd shrunk down to the little guy from the pictures in the Smithsonian, hollow face, stubborn jaw. He was so small. Someone so small should never be in a place like this. He couldn't protect himself. Bucky tugged arrhythmically at the restraints. He'd killed people smaller than Steve, lots of times. "Get out of here," he said. "Get out of here before it's too late."

Steve didn't listen. When did Steve ever listen to anyone telling him to look after himself? He leaned over the table like he thought he could shield Bucky with his skinny body. "I'll hurt you," Bucky said desperately. "I'm not good. I'll hurt you."

Steve kissed him, small and warm, fingers pressed steadying against the inside of his elbow. No—that was the Black Widow. Steve had never kissed him. The Widow straightened up. She was holding a clipboard.

"Increase the dosage and try again," she said.

He'd told Steve to go but now he wished he wasn't gone. He was prepared to bet he didn't have the _psychological reserves_ for another round of this. The metal fittings on the ceiling gleamed green green green. He closed his eyes. He tried to think of something. He tried to remember something. There wasn't anything left. He longed for a mission. Something to hold onto.

The Captain's stories, he thought. Steve's stories, the stories about the old days. All the places Steve had been; all the generous spaces kept for him inside Steve's mind. And Steve's voice, telling the stories, bright, eager, happy.

There was a table. There was a lot of green light. Voices murmured. Voices spoke to him, cajoled, hinted, warned.

He didn't notice much of it. He was somewhere else.

 

* * *

 

Some very distant part of him felt something vaguely like surprise when he woke up back in the cell. The screen was dark. The blue lights in the corridor were flickering. His head ached like something was beating on his skull from the inside. His eyes wouldn't focus. There were spots on the walls. Thudding sounds echoed in his ears, and the memory of wind wouldn't drown it out. A high, thin noise started up. Eventually he realized he was the one making it.

The thudding got louder. It turned out to be footsteps. A creak was the hinges of the barred cell door. Two shadows fell across the floor of the cell. The soldier shuddered and tried to be silent. His breath was coming in harsh pants. He needed to—he had to—

A figure crouched in front of him. He couldn't see the face properly. "Bucky? Bucky, it's me." The voice he knew. The name—he scrabbled for it, angry with himself, he knew this, he'd learned it—

"Captain," he managed to say. No. "Steve—"

"That's right, it's me," said Steve. "C'mon, I'll give you a hand—we're getting out of here." When he didn't do anything, Steve reached out for him. "Come on, Bucky. It's going to be all right."

He let Steve help him to his feet. His vision was still blurred. He had to blink several times before he could make out that the other shadow was the Widow, all in black, her expression neutral.

"This way," Steve said. Bucky listed heavily, leaning on his shoulder. Steve was half-dragging him, like all Bucky's flesh and metal weight was nothing. The corridor seemed to go on for a very long way.

"Through here," said Steve. There was another corridor, and a stairwell. At the foot of the stairs both Steve and the Widow paused. As soon as they weren't walking anymore Bucky sagged. "Did you hear that?" Steve said.

He hadn't heard anything. The Widow said, "I'll check it out. Wait here."

Steve let him sit down on the stairs. He was dizzy. He panted for breath. He didn't know how long the Widow was gone. Apart from his ragged breaths everything was very quiet.

The Widow came back a few minutes later looking unruffled, flicking her hair back into place. Silver gleam of a necklace at her throat. "False alarm," she said. "All clear. Let's move."

Steve dragged Bucky to his feet and helped him put an arm over his broad shoulders. "Not much further," he said. "It's all gonna be okay."

He had to more or less pull Bucky up the stairs. He was a wreck, he thought. He was useless weight. He couldn't do anything. It didn't make sense to retrieve him. The Widow was behind them, watching. He could feel the weight of her look.

"Through here," said Steve at the top of the stairs, and steered him through a door that led into a clean white room.

He balked. Something was—

"You can do this, Bucky," said Steve. "Just trust me."

All the screens were switched off, and the lights were dim. But—

"On my order, soldier!"

His eyes weren't working properly. He was seeing things. The Captain knew what he was supposed to do. Bucky stumbled forward and Steve caught him, hands on his shoulders, before he fell. The Widow came in behind him. He heard her close the door, and the click as it locked.

"Come on," said Steve. "One step at a time."

"Steve—" he said. It was only the second time he'd said Steve's name out loud since he stopped playing at being a dead man. It wasn't something he had any right to. It felt strange on his tongue.

"Shh," said Steve, big hands solid on both his shoulders. Bucky could only feel the warmth of him on the right hand side, but the metal side could still feel pressure. The world was smeared and blurred, green at the edges, but Steve's hands were strong. Steve helped him to walk across the room to the chair. Steve turned him around and sat him down. He felt stiff all over. Sitting was easier than standing. He blinked hard and managed to make his eyes focus on the door. The Widow stood there, her mouth a flat neutral line.

"Bucky, stay with me," said Steve, and Bucky looked up at him with tremendous relief. Steve smiled at him.

"You knew it wasn't me," Bucky said, "the other one?"

"Of course I knew," said Steve.

He closed his eyes. "Good," he mumbled. "Good."

He nearly asked how, but did it matter? Steve knew all sorts of things. Steve was good that way. His head still hurt. He was so tired.

A quiet click was the sound of the restraints settling around his left arm. It was strange that he didn't need to look. He remembered. The memory settled its weight on him like a stone. It didn't feel like the random uncertain flashes or the jumbled sensory recollections of dreams, or like listening to Steve talk and straining after something that wasn't quite there. He remembered it like he remembered every day of his life since being sent to kill Captain America. Control hadn't had the chair quite right before, but this was the real deal. Click, and connections forming, and a faint ripple of blue light over metal as his arm powered down. He couldn't move it anymore. Over and over, so many times, and then came—

He opened his eyes and Steve was still there, still smiling at him. "Wait," he said. "I don't—" _understand_.

Steve put his hand on the soldier's other wrist, fingers touching the human hand, the one he'd decided Bucky probably favored. Steve moved it into place to strap it down. He moved it away again. "Steve," he said, and his voice came out pleading. "Wait, don't—"

"It's all gonna be fine, Bucky," said Steve.

"Oh," he said. Steve took his wrist again. "But—" Steve began to strap him down. He swallowed. He said very quietly, "Why?" He was half hoping Steve wouldn't hear him.

But Steve did hear him. Steve paused what he was doing for a moment with a blank expression. Then he said, "I just can't bear to see you like this."

He licked his lips. That made sense. It had to be uncomfortable for Steve to deal with the empty remnant of his friend. His head still hurt. Maybe that would stop. Maybe everything would stop. It would be sort of like being terminated.

"I'm sorry," he said. His mouth kept going without him really meaning it to. "I wanted to—I tried—"

"I know," said Steve. "You don't have to worry about it anymore."

The mouth guard was on a low table next to the controls. Steve picked it up and came in close. It reminded him of Steve leaning in over the table before, skinny and defenseless, trying to be a shield. He realized he must have dreamed that. He'd been dreaming so many things. He was overdue for a reset. He said that out loud and Steve patted him consolingly on the shoulder. Bucky squeezed his eyes shut. He'd _tried_. He'd known all along that he could never get it right.

There was wetness on his face. Steve waited, kindly. He blinked hard a few times, made himself look over Steve's shoulder at the Widow (she was very still), and finally slumped in the chair.

"Please," he said to Steve, "can I—first—" and then he gave up and just surged up and kissed Steve's mouth, feeling the straps go tight.

Steve didn't react. Barely even seemed to notice. He fell back, defeated.

"Okay," he whispered. Steve put a hand on his jaw to put the mouth guard in.

Two shots rang out, one after the other.

Steve's expression didn't change as his knees sagged and he fell forward. He landed on top of Bucky. He was heavy. Bucky stared up into familiar eyes that had already started to dim. "No," he said. It wasn't possible, Steve couldn't—

and then the Widow wrenched Steve's body off him, threw it to the floor, and shot it again, this time right between the eyes. Her flat expression had turned into distaste. His mind wasn't working right but—"You're one of them," he said. "You're—"

The Widow's eyes flicked to him. "Other way round," was all she said.

Bucky remembered her saying _false alarm._ His mind finally registered what it hadn't before: the very slight disturbance of her hair, because she'd just fought a swift, silent battle against her own double in the dark.

The robot screeched, a sound that no human could ever make, and grabbed her ankle.

The Widow broke its hold with a well-aimed kick and sprang away. He couldn't do anything but watch. His left arm was dead weight, his right firmly strapped down. The thing with Steve's face didn't seem to care that it had been shot multiple times. It was bigger than the Widow, and had to be twice her weight. It had Steve's moves. There was no way—and then when it was done with her it would come back to him, because he'd been too stupid to fight while he had the chance. That was him, always stupid. His breathing turned shallow and began to speed up as he thought of what would happen when the thing bent over him again—

Even as he gasped for breath and his human fingers twitched helplessly against the arm of the chair, something in the back of his mind was registering things, cataloging. The Widow: speed, agility, tactical expertise, deceptive strength: _avoid direct engagement, eliminate from a distance_. The robot: more durable than older models, an upgrade, additional power sources, _Steve's face_ —

The Widow leapt onto the robot's shoulders, wrapped her legs around its throat, and swung all her weight backwards so the thing overbalanced. She twisted like a cat as they both hit the ground, and used her body as a lever to fling the android halfway across the room. It crashed into a man-sized glass tank, which didn't break. (Of course it didn't break, he thought with a lurch. It had to be strong. It was meant for him.)

The robot that looked like Steve was already struggling back to its feet. Half the skin had ripped off the side of its face, leaving the metal curve of its skull and the human-looking teeth set into its jaw exposed. Its reactions had slowed. It just missed catching the grenade the Widow threw after it.

That blew up the tank. Fragments of reinforced glass rained across the room. Fragments of twisted metal and scraps of a red, white and blue uniform were mixed in among them. On top of his panicky breathing and the ache in his head, nausea began to coil in Bucky's stomach at the sight. The Widow didn't pause once she was sure it was down.

"Black Widow here," she said as she turned back to him. She was fitting an earpiece back into her ear. "Mission parameters changed. This is now a rescue. I need extraction urgently. It doesn't have to be subtle. Speed and firepower are priorities."

Her expression remained neutral as whoever she was reporting to responded. "Understood," was all she said, and yet he thought she was not pleased.

Her eyes flicked up and down him then, assessing him. She took care not to get too close to him as she came and undid the straps on his right arm. Her deft gloved hands didn't touch his skin once, and she stepped back immediately when she was done. "Do you know how the restraints holding your metal arm work?" she said. "Nod or shake your head."

He nodded.

"Okay," said the Widow. "Breathe. That's it. I'm going to need you to talk me through it."

"I—" he said. It was hard to focus. Green light was pouring in at the edges of his vision. It took him a moment to realize it was real. One of the screens had come online. Control's sneering face was looking out of it, but not at him.

"Black Widow," it said. "Natasha Romanov. You made a serious mistake coming here."

"I guess it's a habit," said the Widow, not looking away from him. "Zola. I suppose it was too much to hope that we'd seen the last of you."

"Do you not know that if you cut off one head, two shall grow in its place?" Control answered.

Natasha met his eyes and moved her hands towards one of the switches on the side of the chair. "How could I possibly forget," she said. "Is there a missile strike incoming? I'm surprised you can still pull that off, given what we did to SHIELD." She raised her eyebrows at Bucky. He shook his head very slightly. Hit the switches out of order and it would give both of them an electric shock. She pointed to another one, and then another, until he nodded.

"What need have I for missiles when there is an army under your feet?" Control said. Natasha's hands worked deftly on the chair's controls. "They wake from their cold sleep even now. Do you think a locked door will hold against them? Do you think the Winter Soldier can help you fight your way through? He is at the end of his strength; he can barely stand. Without the enhancement of his arm he is a cripple. You are wasting your time trying to release him. You have no way out. You cannot escape."

"Did you like the sound of your own voice this much before you were a computer?" Natasha asked. She hit the last of the switches. The restraints retracted and he felt a jolt of pain through his left side as the arm started to come back online. Bucky slumped in the chair gasping for breath, thought of a rabbity little man stinking of fear and muttering under his breath as he touched his victim with clammy hands.

He said, "Yeah, he did."

Natasha's eyebrows quirked, but she said nothing.

"All your struggles are pointless!" Control snapped. "You cannot rescue him; he was beyond rescue decades ago. He will be back in that chair before long. He will even go willingly. Perhaps you may be the next, Natasha Romanov. It will not be so great a change for you, after all, will it? We both know your history. When you are captured by my androids you can be the second human to receive my great gift."

"Thanks," said Natasha, helping Bucky to his feet, supporting him when he swayed, "but no thanks." Bucky held onto her because it was that or fall over. He shrugged his left shoulder, and again, feeling the metal arm calibrating itself. They were going to have to fight their way out of here. Battle at least was something he understood.

"Fight if you wish! It will make no difference," said Control. "My weapons of destruction are already coming for you. The power of machines is unstoppable."

It was only because he had his head practically on Natasha's shoulder as he fought to stay standing that he heard a voice he didn't know say tinnily through the earpiece, "You know, I resemble that remark."

Then a figure that gleamed red and gold blasted feet first into the room through the roof.

Bucky startled, nearly fell to the ground. He clung to Natasha to stay upright as his heart thudded desperately in his ears. For a moment he heard the wind howling, but it was only Control shrieking a wordless protest.

Natasha rolled her eyes.

"Hey, hi," said the man—if it was a man—in the metal suit. He was hovering a couple of feet off the ground. He sounded pleased with himself. "Did someone call for a taxi?"

"You dare!" shrieked Control.

"Gotta love a nice friendly greeting. Whoa, what have we here, walking wounded?"

"He's been tortured and I think he's drugged," said Natasha. "Don't waste time."

"All right, all right." The metal man pulled him away from Natasha. "Hey, don't worry, I've got you. I'm one of the good guys. I save kittens from trees all the time. And this one time I saved the world."

He stumbled, went where the metal hands took him. Closed his eyes and opened them again. Nothing made sense. He was still thinking with dim miserable horror of Steve's hand on his jaw, coaxing it open for the mouth guard.

"Up you come, princess. Ready for the ride of your life, Black Widow?"

" _Not_ the time," said the Black Widow icily.

Another voice, with synthesized harmonics like Control's but a very different accent, said, "Indeed, I believe there are a number of hostiles approaching, Mr. Stark." 

Hostiles, he thought blearily. That was a word that made sense. Hostiles had to be eliminated. He needed to—

"Stop squirming," said the metal man. "Whoa, hello, cyborg arm, _very_ nice—"

"Quite a large number," said the synthesized voice.

"Nag, nag, nag," said the metal man. "Guess the party's over. Lovely to meet you, what's-your-name, evil computer guy, so sorry we can't stay, but I would _love_ to pick your brains about AI sometime, maybe literally—"

"The Winter Soldier will not escape me," said Control.

The face made of green light focused its gaze on Bucky where he was half-hanging in the metal man's arms, and he found he could not look away. They stared at each other and the rest of the world was quiet, the metal man's _want to bet?_ tinny and faraway.

"It makes no difference what they do to try to reclaim you, Winter Soldier," said Control, in a voice gone low and intimate. "And your rebellion is insignificant. You are a machine designed only for killing. Defy me and you will be corrected; fail me and you will be reprogrammed. Your struggles will cause you only pain. You remain a weapon—one which only I can control."

The green light winked out as the face disappeared from the screen.

"What the hell did he mean by that?" said the metal man.

Bucky already knew what he meant. This particular punishment—this _lesson_ —had, he thought, happened before.

He smelled it first, cooked flesh. He knew the smell and didn’t know where he knew it from. There was a flash of an image, a white-painted house. He knew he’d barred all the doors. Inside there had been—  
  
An instant later scorching pain bloomed outwards from his left shoulder. The arm was a stiff weight by his side, it was— _part of him and not part of him, hooked into his nerves and pinned with metal to his bones, a weapon in the shape of flesh, a_ —hissing and spitting and throwing off sparks, _another malfunction, damn, how long have they been trying to get this thing right, hey, it’s a complicated piece of technology, it’s years ahead of anything anyone else can do, poor bastard, you almost feel sorry for him, don’t you, no way, did you hear about what he_ —

Pounding sounds on the laboratory's locked door, dents appearing in the metal; Control's androids coming for them. He knew he would not be able to fight, not like this. He would have collapsed if the metal man had not been holding him. The burning agony occupied all his attention; shuddering electric shock after electric shock, timed just right so that his body would heal the very worst of the damage before the next one every time. This was the early stages, when they were still minor shocks coming fast—

("We need to move _right now_ , Tony—")

—later it would be slower, and hurt more—

He heard the wind, and this time he felt it too, rushing past him, freezing the wetness on his face. It hurt, it hurt, it wouldn't stop hurting. He moaned, low. He needed to ask about Steve, the real Steve, if he was safe. There was a thing in Steve's home that looked like his best friend and wasn't, and someone had to keep him safe, Steve always needed looking after.

That was the last thought he had before the shocks stepped up and he lost track of everything but the pain.

"—medical attention—" was the last thing he heard anyone say. The wind was gone by then.

 

* * *

 

He snapped into wakefulness very suddenly an indeterminate amount of time later. He thought he might have been dreaming, but he couldn’t remember what the dream was. He kept his eyes shut. The pain had stopped, but he could feel nothing from his left shoulder down; he wasn’t even sure if the arm was still there. He couldn’t hear anyone, but that meant nothing; androids didn’t need to breathe, were soundless until they moved. He hadn’t been restrained. He was on a bed. That meant nothing either. Control had managed to trick him once already, with the thing that had smiled and touched him kindly and looked like Steve.

The bed he was lying on was too soft. His head still hurt, but it hurt clean and terrible now, not fuzzed and mercifully confused like before. He was full of pieces that didn’t fit together, scattered fragments of the things he'd seen in the lab, hallucinations shading into... something else. A rabbity man leaning over a table. Steve as he'd been before the serum. A white house and the smell of roasting flesh. He stared blindly at the ceiling. These were _memories_. And somewhere down underneath these ugly broken pieces, a hell of a long time ago, there had once been Bucky Barnes.

He laughed a little bit, raw, quiet. He’d listened to Steve and clung to the outlines of Steve’s stories. He’d wanted that name, that history, that life.

It wasn’t fair that it didn’t make any difference.

That was a Bucky Barnes thought, _not fair_. Fairness meant nothing to what he was now. What he’d always be, no matter what he did.

At least he knew Steve’s name still. He knew Steve’s name and his history; he knew _hand to hand fighter, enhanced strength and healing, precise and tactical, team leader, dislikes civilian casualties; watch for the shield_. And he knew—he _knew_ —that Steve was good. All put together it wasn’t very much, but it was more than he had of anything else. Whatever happened, whatever he had to do, it wasn’t getting taken from him ever again. He couldn’t make Control release him. He thought he might be able to make it kill him. Let that be the end of the _proof of concept_. He wouldn’t be proof of anything if he was dead. He could fight until Control was forced to terminate him. If there was anything Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier had ever in common, it was that they both knew how to fight.

That thought felt good. It was a line he could draw through the dark places where his shredded memories fell into nothing; it was a thing he could be and have it be true. Bucky Barnes was a first-rate hand to hand fighter as well as a sniper. He followed—

not Captain America. Not the Captain. _Steve_.

He opened his eyes.

Empty room. White ceiling, walls painted cream, a glass of water on the bedside table. Security cameras—one, two, three, probably more—no screen for Control that he could see. He turned his head on the soft pillow and found that the arm _was_ still there; the shine was dulled and panels had been wrenched off it and then haphazardly patched with what looked like scrap metal. The part of the red star he could see from this angle was missing one of its points. He sat up and tried to twist around so he could get a proper look. He had to crane his neck to do it. His left shoulder barely responded to what he wanted; the arm didn’t respond at all. He tried to make a fist with his left hand, and then just to twitch the fingers. The metal hung there broken.

His heart rate kicked up. Control wanted him to go back to the chair willingly, but Bucky didn’t doubt he’d resort to the other way if he had to. It was going to be hard to fight anything like this. It was—

His eyes caught on a framed poster on the wall.

Bucky narrowed his eyes at it. The design was red and gold, block letters. He mouthed the words dubiously, and then repeated out loud, “Iron Man?”

He remembered, as if seen through rippled glass, being pushed by the Black Widow into hands made of metal.

Maybe. Maybe this wasn't Control's lair.

That didn't mean he was safe.

The other him was still in Steve's apartment. _Even the man who calls you his friend cannot see any difference between you and the machine._ Wherever this was, it wasn't where he needed to be. He was damaged—broken. He needed—weapons, first. He swung his legs off the bed and stood up—awkward, compensating for the weight and dangle of the useless arm, but he found he knew how, must have been taught how in case of emergencies. He was wearing unfamiliar clothes, sweatpants and a t-shirt; the t-shirt had the same picture on it as the red and gold poster. Strange. He picked up the glass of water. His throat was dry, but it could have been drugged, so he didn't drink it, just upended it. A puddle of water on the floor, now. He turned the glass around in his right hand and then with a precise and vicious motion smashed it against the edge of the bedside table.

A dozen splinters of glass. He ripped the bed sheet and then wrapped cloth around one end of the largest shard to make a handle. Not much of a knife, but better than nothing. Bucky gripped it tight and ignored the slight edge of pain as glass not properly wrapped cut into his hand.

A weapon. Good. He used the rest of the ripped sheet to make a sling for the metal arm. That would keep it out of the way.

Now for a way out.

 

* * *

 

The building was a skyscraper, he discovered when he passed a window. The skyline beyond the windows was unfamiliar. He'd was on one of the uppermost floors, and no one seemed to be around. As soon as he saw a chance Bucky got himself up into the air ducts. More prudent than wandering around the corridors. He adjusted his grip on his makeshift knife, reopening the cut on his hand that had already closed to a red line, and crawled through the dark spaces until he heard voices. A man was speaking in the room below, voice rising, a sharp edge.

"I’m just saying we should congratulate Natasha. She’s maybe the only person in the world who could impersonate a robot well enough to fool a bad guy who is literally a computer. Maybe that says something about you, what do you think—"

"Mr. Stark."

"—that was mean, wasn’t it, that was nasty. I’m working on being a better person. It’s a work in progress."

"Your report, Agent Romanov." _Fury, Nicholas J_ , he thought. Speaking to the Black Widow. He stopped to listen.

"Oh, don't mind me, I just pay the bills," muttered the man called Stark. "You do know she's not technically your agent anymore, right?"

Natasha ignored him. "There’s nothing more to say," she said. "I made a judgment call and took a risk. If I hadn’t done it Hydra might be counting the Winter Soldier among their assets again by now. I’d like to add that if the intel I found is correct, until he stormed that base in Chicago they didn’t have any idea he’d survived Project Insight. Sir."

"Your assessment has been noted," said Fury grimly.

"Not that I’m not moved by the plight of cyborg guy," said Stark, "but I really think we should talk about the Nazi scientist turned evil supercomputer some more, starting with: how come no one mentioned him to me sooner? Sooner would have been good. I don’t want to boast, but when it comes to artificial intelligence I’m the only guy you’ve got, and luckily for you I am also the best there is, so—"

"We believed Zola was eliminated when the servers he was stored on took a direct hit from a SHIELD missile," said Natasha.

"Uh, yeah, no, excuse me? This is the twenty-first century, the internet is forever. JARVIS is backed up in more places than you know there are places."

" _Cyborg guy_ , as you put it, may be a more urgent concern than you realize," said Fury. "We have no idea how much work Zola managed to do on him before Agent Romanov retrieved him. He cannot simply be left to recuperate in a guest bedroom here in the Tower. He needs to be secured and debriefed."

Bucky curled his hand around the shard of glass.

"We don’t currently possess any facility capable of genuinely securing the Winter Soldier," Natasha began.

She didn't get a chance to say anything else before Bucky crashed down through the ceiling and landed in a ready crouch on the long polished conference table.

He took in the startled faces of the people gathered around one end of the table. There were three of them, as he'd thought. He didn't realize how much he'd been hoping for Steve until he saw for himself that he wasn't there.

The Widow was the first to recover. She snatched up a mug of coffee and threw it at his face snake-quick. A scalding arc of liquid spattered across the conference table. The mug bounced off his deactivated arm and the Widow used his brief distraction to leap onto the table and aim a series of fast feinting blows at his right side.

She was trying to draw out an attack. Bucky gave her what she wanted and lunged, pretending to be off-balance. He let her duck it and slip behind him, and then slashed up and backwards with his right hand. He had the broken mirror glass almost completely hidden in his fist. He would be dripping blood from his palm if he opened his hand. She hadn't seen it yet. When he slashed at her abdomen, blood fell onto the table in a red line alongside the spilled coffee.

The whole thing had happened so fast that Fury and Stark were only just rising to their feet.

Natasha grunted in pain from the shallow cut. It wouldn't slow the Black Widow down. He had to be quick. He leapt off the table, turned, heaved it up and over one-handed; she lost her balance and had to jump for safety as it crashed down on its side with a sound of splintering wood. Stark was right there, looking astonished and angry, raising one hand in an incomprehensible open-palmed gesture. Bucky slashed across his palm with his improvised knife and blood welled red.

Natasha was on her feet again. He was nearly out of time. He turned to Fury.

Fury raised his eyebrows and held out his arm.

At some point in the last ninety seconds he'd rolled up his sleeve.

Everything seemed to go still. Bucky stepped forward and carefully nicked the dark skin of Fury's forearm. He dropped his piece of glass and touched the fingers of his flesh hand to the cut. They came away bloody. He breathed out.

"Are you quite satisfied, Mr. Barnes?" said Fury.

He nodded.

"Stand down," Fury said—not to him.

He looked around. On the far side of the upended conference table, Natasha was holding a pistol pointed at his head. Stark was still making that open-palmed gesture, but in the handful of seconds since Bucky had cut him some sort of gauntlet had appeared on his arm, metal spray painted red and gold. He didn't doubt it was a weapon.

For a few long seconds the tension didn't break. Then Stark shrugged and let his armored arm fall to his side. The gauntlet disassembled itself by some mechanism Bucky couldn't see.

"Agent Romanov," said Fury.

After a moment Natasha reluctantly lowered her pistol.

"I want the record to show," said Stark to her, "that that was my coffee." He looked at the wreckage of the conference table and then at Bucky. "Also, since I'm the one who'll be paying for it, my table. Shame on you, you broke my table. Anyone care to explain what that was about?"

"I believe Mr. Barnes wished to see for himself if all of us would bleed," said Fury.

"What, if you cut me, do I not—oh, right, _right_ , robots. What? I know Shakespeare. I had a very expensive education. No one here is a robot, you could have just asked. You didn't have to cut me with a knife. People I rescue don't usually cut me with knives."

He looked at Stark mutely.

Stark frowned. "He's your friend, Natasha, is he always this creepy?"

Natasha's mouth thinned.

"I'm no one's friend," Bucky said.

"Perhaps you'd like to tell us why you invited yourself to this meeting, Mr. Barnes," said Fury. His eye went up to the hole in the ceiling where Bucky had crashed through for a second, his expression very neutral. Bucky was abruptly reminded of _and I'm sure it's Code to your friends;_ the same sardonic unspoken humor. This wasn't Control's lair. This was somewhere else. These were real people; they bled. Maybe they would help him.

"Steve," he said immediately. "There's a—one of them. A machine. They're made for killing, and it looks like me, and he doesn't know. There's no difference, so he doesn't know—"

"We're aware," said Natasha. "It's already been dealt with."

That couldn't be true. Control had said— "He doesn't know and it's gonna hurt him. You have to—I'm going to—"

He looked around for a weapon. His bloody shard of glass was on the floor where he'd dropped it. He picked it up and there was a red stain on the plush carpet. They were all looking at him. "I need to—"

"It's already been dealt with, Mr. Barnes," said Fury gently.

Bucky shook his head. He didn't believe it. He didn't dare. Fury and Natasha were between him and the door. He turned towards the window, the unfamiliar urban skyline outside.

"Is he deaf?" said Stark.

They wouldn't help him. They wanted to _secure and debrief_ him. A way out—

"Get Steve up here," said Natasha. "He needs to see for himself."

Bucky stopped.

He looked at her. He adjusted his grip on the glass shard.

"It was your explicit recommendation not to involve Captain America yet," said Fury.

"I was wrong. He's in New York for that media thing anyway. Get him up here." Natasha took a step towards Bucky around the wreckage of the conference table. She was keeping her hands where he could see them. Bucky edged away. "Stark, you’ve got his number, haven’t you? Call him. Secure line. Tell him we’ve found Bucky."

She stepped towards Bucky again as she spoke. He took another step away and realized he’d backed himself against the wall. He hadn’t meant to do that. Stark was grumbling but the words didn’t register. The Black Widow was very dangerous. Her facial expression changed; she smiled, soft around the eyes, unthreatening, friendly. "Hey, it’s okay," she said, and reached out for the glass.

Bucky flinched and maybe that made him misjudge his grip. His hand tightened too far and the makeshift knife broke with an audible crunch. He was left with a handful of bloody rags and shards. He dropped the remnants and his heart rate kicked up, not from the pain, but from the sudden lack of a weapon.

Natasha paused and her mouth did something strange, twisting up in a smile that wasn’t nice at all, self-mocking, and then settling on rueful. The soft look vanished from her eyes, and her face looked more real without it. "My bad," she said. "Here."

She had a knife in a concealed sheath against her ribs. She must have been keeping it in reserve when he attacked her before. She took it out very slowly, ostentatiously not a threat, and then just as slowly held it out to him. "This’ll work better, next time you need to be sure," she said.

Bucky reached out cautiously, not trusting her, and then when she stayed still he snatched it out of her hand. It was a good knife, nice balance, good grip. "Thanks," he remembered to say.

Natasha shrugged.

"I am going to trust your judgment, Romanov," Fury remarked, "because your judgment calls have usually been good in the past." His tone was very dry.

"Sir," was all Natasha said, though there was the very slight tilt of a smile on her lips.

"Wow, we’re giving him knives now? We’re giving him knives now."

"Call Steve," said Natasha.

"I’m doing it, I’m doing it!" said Stark, waving a cell phone at her. "JARVIS is doing it. JARVIS, dial Capsicle." He put the phone to his ear. Bucky watched him narrowly.

Stark’s face moved a lot when he talked, even if the person he was talking to wasn’t in front of him. "Hey, hey Cap, long time no see, how are you?" he said brightly, and then, "or not, okay, right to business, I love you too. Listen, Natasha seems to think she’s found something of yours. Tall, dark and stabby? It sounds like you’ve been having a really interesting couple of years, taking down government agencies, reconnecting with old friends, we’ll have to catch up sometime, go out for drinks, I know a place. You don’t drink. Of course you don’t drink. Yeah, I said she’s found him." Pause. "At the Tower, you have your card—oh, you don't. Well. I'll text you." Stark hung up. "You know, I sometimes think that guy doesn’t like me?" he said. "JARVIS, send Cap a security pass."

"Already done, sir," said a voice from the phone.

Bucky gave it a look.

Stark glanced up, saw his expression, and said, "Natasha, you’re the assassin whisperer, tell him JARVIS isn’t evil."

"I take it Captain Rogers is on his way," said Fury. "In the meantime, let us proceed."

"What about him?" Stark said. He jerked his head at Bucky. "We obviously can’t leave him alone. We left him in a bed sleeping off drugs and torture, and now there’s a hole in the ceiling and I think my hand is still bleeding."

"Go," said Natasha. "You don’t need me for anything else. I’ll stay with him."

" _You_ are volunteering to babysit?" said Stark.

"Yes," said Natasha blandly.

"Very well," said Fury. "Keep him company until Captain Rogers gets here.”

“Fine, then," said Stark. " _Fine._ " He turned to Fury. "We'll head to the workshop, I can show you what I'm thinking—"

When they were gone Natasha moved over to the opposite side of the room from him. Bucky watched her closely. She pulled up the bloodied hem of her shirt, touched the skin of her abdomen next to the long shallow cut he’d given her, and made a face. She took a bottle from the drinks cabinet and started to carefully clean and disinfect the injury.

"Guess I won’t take that vacation in St Tropez this year either," she said lightly as she worked. "I’ve never met a man so dedicated to preventing me from wearing a bikini."

Bucky stared at her. After a moment he said, "Sorry."

"It’s okay. I’m not really a vacations kind of person."

He didn’t reply. The room was quiet for a while except for Natasha’s occasional hisses of pain. She didn’t seem to be watching him. Bucky didn’t doubt she was, though.

Time stretched. It was hard to stay on alert after minute after minute when nothing happened. He found himself sinking into a sniper’s calm. The cuts from the glass had closed into red lines, and the knife Natasha had given him was a comforting weight in his right hand. He could throw it from here if he needed to.

When she was done cleaning the cut she looked up at him and smiled, a very brief flicker. "Okay," she said. "I’m really not going to hurt you, you know. Not unless you turn out to be a threat."

He nodded. He liked that she was clear about when she would hurt him.

"I’m going to ask you a few questions, though," she said.

"Secured and debriefed," said Bucky. Then he closed his mouth abruptly, surprised by the sound of his own voice, the bitterness of it.

Natasha paused, looking at him. "We really can’t secure you," she said at last. "Not if you're as good as I think you are. We haven’t got the manpower or the technology to prevent you from leaving if you want to, whether you’re the Winter Soldier or not. Fury knows that."

"I am the Winter Soldier," he said.

"Okay," said Natasha. "That’s good to know." She tilted her head. "Are you also James Barnes?"

He shook his head. Then he shrugged.

"I can leave if I want to?" he said.

"Don’t leave before Steve gets here," said Natasha. "It’ll kill him."

He didn’t reply. He knew he wasn’t going anywhere until he’d seen for himself that Steve was safe. _If_ Steve was safe.

"All right," said Natasha, after he didn’t move. "Let's do this. What can you tell me about Zola?"

He worked his jaw. Even hearing the name felt wrong to him; it wasn't the one he was supposed to know. But he wasn’t going to be quiet. He’d tell her. He _would_ tell her—

She was watching with an expression starting to turn concerned by the time he finally spat out, "Control."

The sudden stab of pain afterwards felt like getting kicked in the teeth. He flexed his fingers around the handle of the knife and rode it out, breathing hard. He wasn’t afraid of pain. Pain couldn’t stop him.

"Control?" repeated Natasha, when he’d managed to get his breathing back to more or less even.

"Control," Bucky confirmed. "He’s Control." He swallowed hard. "I saw him in Chicago. He can build himself a body if he wants. He’s dangerous. He’s," he had to pause and pant for breath.

"You’re not supposed to talk about him, are you?" Natasha said, eyes sharp. "It’s okay. Take your time. Tell me the parts that matter."

"He made me," Bucky said. "He made me. He—he was scared shitless of the Red Skull, so he made me."

Natasha’s eyes narrowed. "I thought the Winter Soldier was a Soviet initiative," she said.

And Bucky found that this was something he knew. He had memories now, not many but enough to answer her from the patterns of missions, from languages he'd woken up knowing, hell, even from the equipment they'd handed him—"They played the Cold War from both sides," he said. "When they sent me after Soviet targets they gave me American bullets. Control wasn’t," he was pulling together pieces of different memories, dozens of scattered fragments, _if only you knew how many times you have asked me that question_ , "he was never the boss, he never did the politics, he was R&D, he always," he struggled for the end of the sentence, "he always despised most of them. They treated him like a pawn and he thought he was better, smarter, than any of them. He thinks he’s a, a, a—"

"A leader," said Natasha.

"An _idealist_ ," Bucky got out, and then he had to stop and retch a few times.

"Okay?" said Natasha when he was done.

He managed to nod.

"I need you to tell me his plan, if you know it," she said. "He’s an idealist. What's his ideal? What does he want?"

"Control," he whispered, and then he said, "Peace."

"Can you tell me what that means?"

It meant machines, he wanted to say. It meant quiet and order and things working the way they were supposed to, doing what they were told. It meant long rows of glass tanks with useful tools suspended open-eyed and silent inside. It meant him.

Pain roared up along with the thought, pain and the memory of pain, over and over; he wasn’t supposed to think like this, he wasn’t supposed to think at all. He barely felt the knife fall from his hand, and the sound of it hitting the floor didn’t register properly either, but now his hand was empty so he shoved the meat of his thumb into his mouth and bit down on the scream, trying to trade one pain for another. But it didn’t work. He tasted blood but he was still seeing cold storage in his mind. They’d put Natasha down there and they’d put Steve down there and they’d put him down there and he’d never get out, never get out...

"Stop," he heard Natasha say a very long way away, " _Stop_ —James, stop, Bucky, stop it, don’t push yourself, there’s ways around this—listen to me—" but he couldn’t. The pictures in his head wouldn’t go away. He knew they weren’t real but that didn’t make a difference. He was aware of Natasha standing up and coming closer to him and then closer again; he fought his way to the surface and looked up into her eyes as she stood over him, and he saw her reach out a hand and then draw it back with a strange, helpless motion. The rush of pain was receding, but he still couldn’t speak, couldn’t speak and had to, could hear his own breath coming in wheezing sounds through his nose and not much else, taste the blood he’d drawn from his own flesh, and suddenly Natasha turned her head and looked at the door.

He couldn’t make himself do the same. His muscles were barely responding to him. He focused on trying to make his jaw unclench so he could stop biting his hand. It was difficult. He whined a little when he managed it; the bite marks around the base of his thumb were deep, and hurt more now he'd let go. A weapon, a weapon. He’d dropped his knife. He groped around where it should be, found the blade first and then the hilt, managed to get it back into his hand and curl his fingers tight.

Fucking _Christ_ that hurt.

Then he finally heard what Natasha had heard: footsteps, pounding fast. Someone in the stairwell taking the stairs two at a time. Then voices in the hallway, echoing, this place had high ceilings— _Sir, this floor is off-limits, Mr. Stark and his guests—he’s invited, don’t worry, he just has a thing about elevators; oh, and hey, Cap, sudden moves, probably a bad idea, just a heads-up—_

Natasha raised her voice and said, "In here!" and the voices outside went quiet. Bucky flinched. She was standing so close.

She seemed to realize what was wrong and stepped back a couple of paces. He tested his grip on the knife. He didn’t look up.

Someone standing in the doorway said quietly, "Oh thank God."

Bucky closed his eyes.

"Steve—careful, he’s—" Natasha began.

More footsteps, straight line across the room to him, totally ignoring the wreckage of the conference table. Steve crouched just down long enough to haul Bucky onto his feet and into an embrace.

He was strong. He was in uniform, with the shield slung across his back. His arms went around Bucky and held tightly, right to the edge of pain, and Bucky couldn’t see his face, and he maybe hadn’t even noticed the knife. "Bucky," he said thickly.

Bucky’s hand twitched a couple of times and he let the knife go. He put his working arm around Steve in turn. He put his face down against Steve’s shoulder. Steve hung onto him like he’d disappear if he let go. He smelled right, like himself. Bucky hadn’t realized he knew Steve’s smell.

After a minute Steve breathed out and said, "Sorry." He let Bucky go and stepped back. Bucky stared at him.

"He probably needs to check you’re not a robot," said Natasha quietly.

Steve nodded without looking away from Bucky. He even smiled a bit. He knelt down to pick up Bucky’s knife and offer it back to him. Bucky took it carefully. Steve spread his arms a little, offering himself up, and Bucky knew without thinking about it half a dozen things he could do that would probably kill him, starting with stabbing him in his unprotected gut.

"C’mon," said Steve.

Bucky shook his head. "It’s okay," he said. "I know you."

Steve’s face did something complicated and settled into a crooked smile. "You sure? I don’t mind."

"I’m sure," Bucky said. He went to put the knife away and realized he didn’t actually have anywhere to put it. He was still wearing the sweatpants and Iron Man t-shirt he'd woken up in. He frowned. Steve made a small noise that turned out to be the cracked beginning of a laugh. Bucky gave him an impatient look.

Steve made a weird face and then passed the back of his hand across his eyes and laughed properly, even if it was small. "I’m gonna hug you again, okay?" he said, and then he just did it. Bucky froze for a moment in the warm circle of Steve’s arms, and then he carefully opened his hand and let the knife go once more so he could hold Steve as well. He fitted his human arm around him, careful of the shield. He closed his eyes. Steve still smelled right.

"I was so scared," Steve said.

Bucky tucked his head down and thought about this. "Yeah. So was I."

"That’s it?" said Stark, who had come into the room at some point and Bucky, bizarrely, had no idea when. "Give him a hug and you’re all good? Wait, does this mean there was a hug test available all along, because if so, I can’t believe there was a hug test available and instead we all got stabbed."

Bucky lifted his head and stared at him flatly over Steve’s shoulder. "Are you asking for a hug, pal?"

Stark took a step back. "No, no, I’m good."

Natasha made a very small noise of amusement.

He could feel Steve’s shoulders shaking a little; maybe he was laughing. Maybe something else. It was hard to tell. He didn’t let go of Bucky. They were so close together Bucky could feel how his chest moved up and down when he breathed. It used to be Steve didn’t breathe so well sometimes. He remembered that. He thought maybe he’d known it even when he hadn’t remembered it. He’d spent a lot of time in Steve’s apartment watching him breathe.

Then Steve let go of him and said, "What happened to your arm?"

Bucky glanced at it. The sling he'd made from the ripped sheet was still holding. "Fried," he said.

"God, Bucky—"

" _You_ were nearly fried," said Stark, oblivious to the way Steve immediately frowned at the interruption. "That was what, an electric shock every ten seconds when I was airlifting you and Natasha out of there? I had to land on a rooftop and disable the whole thing first chance I got, you're welcome."

Bucky paused and looked at him, and then down at his damaged arm again, the broken star, the ugly metal patches. It—it hadn't really hit him, before, what it meant. The arm was Hydra, was something they'd twisted into him to make him a more effective weapon, a part of him he could never get rid of. He touched the metal of the patchwork with his other hand. It was cold. He hadn't known that anyone apart from Control could—

"Yes, I know it's not pretty, I was in a rush," said Stark, as if that were what mattered. "Speaking of!" He bounced a little on the balls of his feet. "Now that you've had your touching BFF reunion and no one is getting stabbed anymore, Fury and I did some planning and now I've got a proposition for you, Cap. You'll be pleased to hear it involves your favorite thing."

Steve looked unimpressed. "Lady Liberty, baseball, or apple pie?"

Natasha snickered.

"None of the above!" said Stark. "And I'm hurt you think I'd go for the cheap joke. Not that you're wrong, but I'm hurt."

"I don't know why I assumed," said Steve.

"Apology accepted. If that was an apology. I don't actually care. But listen, how does Captain America feel about defeating Nazis?"

Steve's eyebrows quirked in a familiar expression that made something inside Bucky feel oddly light. "What do you know," he said, "that actually is my favorite." 

Bucky looked down. His face was trying to smile; it was strange. And—fighting Nazis. Fighting Hydra. Without thinking he tried to make a fist with his left hand, but the arm lay there dead. He was nearly useless like this.

As Stark and Natasha were leaving the room Steve caught Bucky with a hand on his right bicep and looked him square in the eye. "Wait—listen, I need to know something," he said. "And you’ve got to tell me the truth. Please."

Bucky tried to look away but it was hard to avoid Steve’s blue gaze. "What?" he said.

"Was it you we got back from Chicago?" said Steve.

He startled. Whatever he’d been expecting, that wasn’t it at all. "I—"

"Because I thought it was. And so did Sam," Steve said. "You were bleeding. I said your name and you told me there was no such person. Was it you?"

In Chicago he’d been the Winter Soldier; he remembered the easiness of it, being given the mission and just going, an army to wipe out and nothing in his way, no _complications._ No choices except success or death. He’d picked up and gone without hesitation and it had felt good, right, what he was made for. He remembered too the hurt on Steve’s face when he lashed out, _you ought to know that by now._ The dull satisfaction of telling him the truth: telling him no, because Bucky Barnes was dead and gone, drowned in green light long ago, and Steve didn’t get that he was a lot better off that way—

"Yeah," he said. "That was me."

"And the next morning," said Steve, "when you apologized and said some days were bad days, said you’d try harder—was that you?"

"No," said Bucky. "It wasn’t."

Steve’s fingers tightened on his bicep. "Okay," he said. "That’s—that's what I thought."

"He said," began Bucky, and then thought better of it.

"Tell me," said Steve.

"He said there was no difference," Bucky said. "He said you couldn’t tell."

Steve met his eyes steadily. "He lied to you, Buck," he said.

" _How_ could you—"

"Turns out I have a pretty good idea what it looks like when someone’s trying to impersonate my best friend from seventy years ago," Steve said. "Once I stop fooling myself."

Bucky looked away.

"Got it," he said.

"No—listen. I don't think you do get it. The robot told me what I wanted to hear," said Steve. "And only ever what I wanted to hear. You never did that. Our whole lives, you told me what I _needed_ to hear. When I was being stupid. When I was letting my pride get the better of me. You're you. You wouldn't go along with everything I wanted unless you were," he made a face, "up to something."

Bucky heard himself huff out something that was almost but not quite a laugh. So he'd been getting it wrong, been doomed to get it wrong, all along. The man he'd been before hadn't defined himself by Steve. Hadn't needed to.

"I—something funny?" said Steve.

"Sort of. Not really," said Bucky. "Do you want to fight Nazis or not?" He jerked his head the way Stark and Natasha had gone. "Come on."

 

* * *

 

Stark's workshop had huge gleaming glass doors. Inside it was spacious and airy. Three powered-down Iron Man suits stood in a row on a stand. The opposite wall was a bank of windows. The city outside—

He knew where he was, now. Someone had said earlier. New York. Bucky had grown up in New York. He knew as much from the recon he'd done before. And only from that, he found. It didn't look familiar.

Stark was talking freely as he conducted them in. "Here's where the magic happens, mi casa es su casa, don't touch anything—"

Bucky stopped abruptly just inside the glass doors.

"What?—oh, oh. Do you know, I completely forgot that was there."

"Bucky?" said Steve. He felt a careful touch on his shoulder.

He didn't move.

It was him.

He was hanging in midair over a white table, suspended in blue light. The hair was maybe a little too short. His had grown out some while Control had him. But it was still him, hanging there naked, very still, with his eyes closed. Blue holographic screens around him were lit up with diagrams and three-dimensional deconstructions. Tools were laid out in a sweep of silver metal on a tray on the next table, waiting. Bucky blinked hard. He looked at himself. The images on the screens were blue. Green. Blue. _Green_.

Somewhere off to the side Stark was saying, "I feel like it would be weird to be confronted with your own robot doppelganger. Is it weird? It looks like it's weird. I would be freaking out right now. That was not a suggestion, don't freak out,  _don't_  freak out—he's freaking out, isn't he?—okay, wait. Wait, wait, wait right there—"

Steve was gripping Bucky's good shoulder firmly now, a support. Steve was standing beside him. He was there, he was safe, he was okay. Because that thing wasn't Bucky. It was something else. They'd deactivated it and stripped it bare and brought it here to lay it out on a table and surround it with machinery and green light—

—blue—

—green—

—but it was all right because it wasn't him—

—unless this Steve wasn’t real. Unless none of it was real. Maybe he was hallucinating again.

Maybe the one on the table was the Winter Soldier. Maybe he was the robot.

Steve was talking to him, low and urgent, but he couldn't make out the words. He could feel his heartbeat speeding up. If he had a heart. Maybe that was just want Control wanted him to think.

"Ta-da!" said Stark, suddenly standing much too close to him. He was holding up something the size of a keychain, and he waved it in front of Bucky's nose. It had a light on one end. Bucky automatically went backwards, and he was shaken enough now that he forgot to compensate for his balance being thrown off by the ruined arm. He stumbled into the solid wall of Steve's body behind him. Steve caught him, hand on his metal shoulder to steady him. Bucky was used to feeling pressure there. It was strange to only be aware of Steve's hand where the fourth and fifth finger pressed against scarred human skin through the t-shirt.

Stark just rolled his eyes. He pointed his device at himself. It lit up amber for a second and then turned blue in his hand and beeped. He pointed it at Bucky and the light winked out, and came up again flashing an uncertain amber for several seconds before it decided on blue. Then the thing beeped again. Bucky stared at it.

"So I only made a few of these, they're a little fiddly and I got bored," Stark said. "This one was for you, Cap, but I actually think your boyfriend," a snide look at Steve's hand on Bucky's shoulder, and Steve tensed up but didn't move away, "needs it more. The Stark pocket robo-detector! Patent pending, no bloodshed required, you're welcome."

He pushed it into Bucky's good hand with cavalier disregard both for Bucky's personal space and for the knife he was still holding. Bucky was surprised enough to look away from his other self and stare down at the object he was holding. It looked innocuous. He turned it over in his hand, juggling it with the knife. He tried pointing it at the body on the table: amber, for several seconds, and then the light went red, and instead of a beep there was a long angry warning tone.

That didn't necessarily prove anything. Bucky took a deep breath and walked across the room. He didn't hesitate. A slash of the knife across the face of the thing on the table, his own face. It stayed still and silent, dead. Synthetic skin curled away from the cut like old paper. It didn't bleed.

He turned and looked at Steve, who was watching him with a question in his eyes. Bucky had been sure, before, when Steve embraced him. And there hadn't been a moment since when Steve was out of his sight. He could keep being sure.

Whatever Steve saw on Bucky's face made him relax minutely and let out a very slight sigh of relief.

"Wow, and I thought I was a melodramatic person," said Stark. "You could give _lessons_."

There was a pointed cough from across the room.

Fury was sitting with his arms folded across the back of a chair. What expression was visible behind his opaque sunglasses was very neutral. "If you're finished. I do not, as a matter of fact, have all day," he said. "I am attempting to run an international antiterrorist organization with fewer than a dozen agents and no one to delegate to. We are here to deal with the problem of Arnim Zola first and foremost. If you'd care to show us this weapon you've built, Mr. Stark."

Bucky turned his head and looked sharply at Stark. He could not imagine a weapon that would work against Control. Not when Control had such weapons of his own.

"Well, not built, it's not done yet, designed—right, right, here it is. Hell- _o_." Stark brought up a three-dimensional holographic display like the ones that still surrounded the deactivated android. This one was gleaming with shifting lines of bright blue symbols, flashing and changing and moving through the air faster than the eye could follow in multiple sets of columns. "JARVIS, how's she doing?"

"Nearly complete, sir," said a voice out of the air. Bucky startled, all his muscles tensing up. Stark's computer again. He still didn't like it.

"JARVIS is building her, I'm not building her. I couldn't code her—well, I could, but it'd take me months. She was my idea. Meet Mnemosyne."

"This is a weapon?" said Steve, looking up at the shifting blue lines of code.

"Uh, excuse me, who's the weapons expert here? That would be me. This is a weapon, this is  _the_ weapon. If I was still in the business of selling wholesale destruction to Uncle Sam—well. I'll spare you the computer babble, you wouldn't get it. She's a virus."

"That's it?"

"That's it, he says—sometimes you're still pretty Forties, Cap—look, what we're dealing with here is software. Intelligent and malevolent, lots of personality, sure, but ultimately, Zola is code. Mnemosyne is an attack dog, a hunter, and what JARVIS is doing," Stark flung himself into a chair and brought up another screen; this one had lines of green symbols among the blue, "is teaching her Zola's scent. So to speak."

"How does JARVIS know?"

"Good question! It's all over the handy code samples you brought me." Stark jerked his thumb vaguely in the direction of the android on the table. "So, yes, superweapon, targeted, intelligent, probably won't knock out anyone's cell phone once she goes live." Natasha snorted. "Zola will have copies of himself backed up everywhere but they're networked, got to be, or his personality couldn't stay coherent. Once Mnemosyne she knows what he looks like she won't ever forget, will you, baby? She finds him, she worms her way in, and then she starts deleting data in chunks. Goodbye, computer guy. And she'll keep finding him. She can follow him all the way down; the minute he's connected to any network she can get access to, he's toast. All we have to do is get her uploaded onto one of his core servers, and thanks to my absolute genius—" Natasha coughed "—and, yes, to you bringing some androids in to work from, well done, very helpful—we know where we're going. I traced the parts."

Fury nodded and stood up. "If Iron Man's analysis is correct—"

"If?" squawked Stark.

"If Iron Man's analysis is correct, Zola's current main base of operations appears to be an underground bunker in Newark," said Fury. "We're sending a small strike team out of necessity; a small strike team is all we've got. Three people. There will almost certainly be androids on guard, and we can't rule out the possibility of human Hydra operatives as well. The androids will cease to be an issue once Mnemosyne goes into action—you're sure of that?"

"Definitely," said Stark. "Well, ninety percent. Eighty-five."

"All right," said Steve. "Natasha and Bucky and I—"

"Absolutely not. Mr. Barnes will not be participating in this mission."

Steve glared. "No one has more right—"

"It's okay, Steve," said Bucky. He was no use to them anyway. He had a useless hunk of ruined metal hanging from his shoulder. He was broken. 

He felt a secret, shameful relief. He wouldn't have to face Control. They weren't going to give him this mission, they weren't going to make him. He was _allowed_ to be useless; they weren't going to just lop this arm off him and give him a new one. And he didn't have to say he was scared, either. It was hard to face the thought of looking like a coward in front of Steve. Steve wasn't someone you ever wanted to let down.

"Zola has a personal interest in the Winter Soldier," Fury said. "I would describe his attitude as possessive. He certainly believes he can still control him, and I for one am not eager to put that to the test. We don't know yet if Iron Man can repair his prosthetic—"

"Excuse _me_ ," said Stark.

Bucky felt his eyes widen. If he _could_ be repaired—if he _could_ be useful—no one had said it was possible. The thought of facing Control still made him feel sick—but—

He realized Steve was watching him; he drew in a quick breath and tried to control his reactions. This was a mission briefing. He shouldn't be standing here distracting Steve by feeling things.

"Furthermore, if Iron Man can repair Mr. Barnes' arm, we don't know that Zola can't then simply disable it as he has once already," said Fury. He looked over at Bucky and paused.

It took a second for Bucky to realize that he was waiting for an answer. The cold part of his mind considered quickly, efficiently. Fury's assessment was correct. He was—even repaired, he was still useless to Steve for this.

He nodded, once. Steve was standing by with his shoulders squared, still all ready to fight it out on Bucky's behalf, but when he saw Bucky nod he subsided.

Fury turned away, hands locked behind his back, and began to pace and talk. "I dislike how poor our intel for this operation is compared to SHIELD operations in the past," he said. "And I regret not being able to send you in with considerably more backup. Zola must be aware that we have captured some of his creations. It is not impossible that he will be expecting us to make an attempt on the Newark bunker. However he will not be expecting Mnemosyne. In that lies our one advantage. The rest will have to depend on speed, stealth, and competence. Competence, luckily, is available to us." His nod took in both Natasha and Steve. "The strike team will consist of Captain Rogers, Agent Romanov, and one other. Since Iron Man’s suits are weapons of mass destruction designed to be remotely piloted by a powerful AI, and our enemy _is_ a powerful AI, he will be sitting this one out."

Stark made a face and Fury gave him a quelling look. "I see you already had the argument," murmured Natasha.

Bucky didn't listen. He was thinking. Three people on the strike team. Steve and two to watch his back. Competence. And not Stark with his tremendous technological firepower, and not him.

"You should take the Falcon," he said quietly.

All of them looking at him at once felt like a lot. He swallowed, focused on Steve and tried to kid himself the others weren't there. "You should take Sam," he said. "On the mission. He's good. And he'll watch out for you."

It was more words than he'd said at once in a while. It was true, though; Sam was good. Sam could watch Steve's back. Bucky'd seen it, while he was living in Steve's apartment. And before, on Project Insight—the Falcon had been there. He remembered making the necessary assessments, looking for weaknesses. There were some. But— _teamwork_ —in combination with Steve and Natasha—someone who thought in three dimensions, air support and quick reactions; and someone too who knew what was important, who cared about Steve—

The few decisions Hydra had ever let him make had been about how to carry out a mission, about what was necessary. These were things he understood. These were choices he could trust himself on.

Steve was smiling at him. Bucky looked away.

"Mr. Wilson was also going to be my suggestion," said Fury.

"Yes," said Steve. "Sam's who we need. He's still in DC, though."

"We'll get him here ASAP," said Fury. "Mnemosyne should be ready in—"

"Eight hours?" said Tony. "Call it eight hours."

"Less, sir," said JARVIS.

"The three of you will each take a copy of the virus. Iron Man will arrange transport and act as backup if absolutely necessary. Your mission is to get in there, get it uploaded onto the servers, and get out again. There may be surprises; you are the best equipped out of what I've got left to deal with them." Natasha raised her eyebrows. "Apart from Hawkeye, who can't be spared from the situation in Europe," Fury said, with a nod of acknowledgment.

"What situation in Europe?" said Stark.

"Need-to-know, Mr. Stark," said Fury quellingly. "Mr. Barnes will remain here, in Stark Tower—"

"Avengers Tower—" Stark said.

"—under observation, in case of unwelcome developments." Fury turned towards Bucky and took off his sunglasses, exposing his eyes—one damaged and one whole. He met Bucky's eyes. "Knowing what I know now," he said gravely, "I should never have sent you to that installation in Chicago. For that, I apologize."

Bucky blinked. He hadn't expected—no one had ever—you didn't  _apologize_ to a—

He licked his lips. "It's okay," he said. "It's fine."

 

* * *

 

A lot of things started happening very quickly after that, but Bucky wasn't needed for any of them. He took himself and his broken arm off to a corner, as far away from his android double as he could get, while the others moved about, discussing, planning, sorting out equipment. He had Natasha's knife laid carefully by his side where he could reach it if he had to. He flipped the robot detector over and over in his hand. Occasionally he pointed it at one of the others: blue, blue, blue. Red for his double. When he pointed it at himself the light always danced uncertainly amber for a few long seconds while it made up its mind about him. It was a strange, small satisfaction every time it flipped over to blue and the beep sounded.

Stark seemed to be taking real joy in loading the strike team down with weapons. "No, Tony," said Natasha to him at one point.

"Just a _small_ missile launcher."

"No."

"A tiny one."

"I’m not you, I don’t need heavy weapons to make me feel better, and I need to be able to _walk_ , Tony."

Stark looked offended, but seemed to have forgotten about it ten minutes later. Bucky couldn't see what was wrong with taking a small missile launcher. Steve wouldn't accept one either. He was still in uniform, shield on his back. He looked bigger like that than he did in his civilian clothes; solid, real, reliable. Maybe it was just that he walked taller dressed that way.

Sam arrived about the same time that Fury left for whatever the situation was that was happening in Europe. Steve looked tremendously pleased to see him, and Sam drew him into a big back-slapping hug. Bucky flipped the robot detector over one-handed and pointed it at him. Blue light. Little beep. He did it again just to be sure; same reaction. "There is no need to be concerned, sir," said the voice of JARVIS out of a speaker in the wall next to him. "All of the Tower’s entrances have been equipped with scanners." Bucky fumbled the detector and nearly dropped it. "I apologize for startling you," added JARVIS.

A computer shouldn't be able to sound so much like a person. It made him uncomfortable. He didn't reply. He checked himself with the detector again. Amber. Blue. Beep.

Sam came over and greeted him. "You had us worried," he said. "I don’t think Steve slept."

Bucky said nothing.

"I kept an eye on him for you," said Sam.

After a second Bucky nodded. Sam and Natasha had been with Steve when he wasn't. They'd helped Steve take out the—the other him. The one that wasn't him. If they hadn't been there—

He should never have tried to leave, he thought abruptly. Even though he wasn't good. He shouldn't have left.

"Wilson! Falcon? Listen, neither of those rolls off the tongue, have you got a nickname, or can I call you Sam—anyway, get over here and try these on for size."

"Gotta get my wings," said Sam, nodding in the direction of Stark's voice. He smiled at Bucky and didn't hold out his hand or anything like that, didn't try to come any closer to him.

"Thanks," said Bucky, low. "For keeping an eye on him."

Sam didn't seem surprised. "You’re welcome, man. Any time." Then he went away.

"How do you feel about missile launchers? Small ones," Bucky heard Stark say a few minutes later.

He looked down at the robot detector. Turned it over. Pointed it at himself. Amber. Blue. Beep.

He glanced up when he felt someone’s eyes on him. "What?"

"Nothing," said Steve, who’d paused in the middle of the workshop floor. He was holding a file. Maybe he was meant to be reading it. "You were smiling."

Bucky looked at him.

Steve came over and leaned the shield against the wall, dropped the file beside it. Then he sat down next to Bucky, stretching out his legs on the floor. "I'm sorry I wasn't here when you woke up," he said quietly. "I would've been. You know I would."

Bucky shrugged. "They didn't tell you I was here."

That made Steve scowl. "I don't like Fury deciding he knows what's best for me."

"Wasn't Fury," said Bucky. "It was the Widow. Natasha."

Steve looked abruptly hurt—no, betrayed. He shouldn't look like that, Bucky thought. It had been the right call. The same call Bucky would've made. “She was right," he said. "They didn't know what would wake up."

"She still shouldn't have—"

"I like her," Bucky said.

Steve paused. "You do?"

"Yeah," Bucky said. "She looks out for you. She’s smart."

Steve gave him a pleased little smile for that. "She is," he said. "She’s kind, as well."

Bucky thought about hands that carefully didn't touch him as they undid the straps on the chair. How she’d sat across the room and told him to take his time when she was interrogating him about Control. How she'd given him a weapon. He touched the hilt of the knife where it was still waiting beside him just in case.

"Yeah," he said. "She is."

Steve looked away and down. His eyes closed for a second, lashes fanning against his cheeks. He said in a low voice, "You know, I think that’s the first time since you turned up on my doorstep that you've..."

"What?"

"Told me something you’re really thinking," Steve said. "Told me something that’s true."

“You don’t want to know what I’m really thinking,” Bucky said. He looked across the room to where Stark and Natasha and Sam were having an energetic conversation. He could still see his android self out of the corner of his eye. He hated looking at it, but didn't want to lose track of it either. "It's a real mess in here, Steve."

"I still want to know," said Steve. "Of course I want to know. You’re my friend."

Bucky gave him a flat look. "You want to know all the ways I could kill you if I had to? Because I don't ever stop thinking things like that."

Steve went still and then brought his head up, jaw firm. "Okay," he said. "How many are there?"

"Depends," Bucky said. "If you’re actually Steve Rogers, plenty. If you’re one of Control's machines," and he was sure, he was sure, he was almost sure, but part of him still—he shrugged, one-shouldered by necessity. "They keep getting better. And I’m..." he tilted his head. "Disarmed."

Steve stared at him and then gave a startled bark of laughter. " _Bucky_."

Bucky grinned, fleeting. He did sound like Steve. The laugh was right; it was the same laugh Steve had when Bucky teased him about old days he couldn't actually remember. The expressions were right too, and the way he sat with his knees bent, and the look in his eyes when he looked at Bucky. Bucky was sure. He could be sure. He could try.

"Does your arm hurt?" said Steve.

Bucky shook his head. There was no feeling at all.

"Tony can repair it," Steve said. "He's... pretty hard work, sometimes, but he really is a genius."

Bucky nodded, tried not to think about it too hard. He didn't want to crack in front of Steve. He thought of something else. The metal man talking, the rhythms of Stark's—Tony's—babble. "Did he really save the world?"

"Yeah," said Steve. "One time. I guess he did." He tilted his head, gave Bucky a crooked grin. "I helped. It was an alien invasion. We all pitched in."

"How many is _all_?"

"Six of us?"

Bucky gave him a narrow look. "How many aliens?"

"Well," said Steve. "An army."

“You’re an idiot,” said Bucky.

Steve quirked an eyebrow at him. "So they tell me." His smile faded as Bucky just kept looking at him. "Now what are you thinking?"

Bucky hesitated. Steve had survived an alien army, could even laugh about it, and yet afterwards he'd let the Winter Soldier—

"Project Insight," he said. "I beat you up pretty bad."

"Bucky, you know that doesn't matter. That wasn't you."

"It was," he said. "It was me. I was angry with you. Really angry."

After a quiet moment Steve said, "Any particular reason?"

Bucky looked down at the robot detector in his hand. He flipped it over. Pointed it at himself.

Amber. Blue.

"You kept talking to me," he said, and had to stop there for a second. Steve waited. He seemed to understand. "You kept talking to me," Bucky said again at last. "And it made me—" feel things he wasn't supposed to know existed: _furious_ , was one of them, and _terrified_ , but most of all—"I couldn't keep the mission straight in my head. I’m nothing without a mission."

Steve exhaled hard. "That’s not true," he said.

"It _is_ true," Bucky said. "You don’t have to like it. I know you don’t like it. I can’t be the guy you remember. I’m sorry." Steve opened his mouth. Bucky kept talking over him. "I beat you up pretty bad. Your face was all..." he dropped the robot detector in his lap so he could reach out and draw the line of the cut that had been on Steve’s forehead. Steve stayed still under his hand. "You were a mess," Bucky said. "I guess I've seen you messed up like that before. Maybe I..."

"You knew me," said Steve softly.

Bucky said, "Sometimes I know things I don’t know."

Steve didn't say anything.

"I liked your stories," Bucky told him. "When I was being him, the other me. I liked your memories. I liked you telling me."

Steve didn't answer. He seemed to be holding his breath. Bucky's hand was still on Steve’s face. He’d probably been touching him for too long. He let it drop away.

Steve took a deep breath to speak and Tony said suddenly, "Hey, Cap, we need your input on—oh, am I interrupting something? Did I interrupt?"

He was standing right over them and neither of them had noticed. Steve jerked his head up to glare. Bucky snorted. "Go on," he said. "Mission takes priority."

"Not over you," said Steve.

Bucky rolled his eyes. "Sap. I'm telling you, go."

 

* * *

 

A couple of hours later, when all the business in the workshop seemed to have wound down, there was a break for food. "Take-out, I’ll call for take-out, who likes Indian? We’ll have Indian," said Tony. "JARVIS, get us Indian. Some of everything. Lots of everything, Cap can put away enough for four. We’ll have a nice meal, sit-down meal, like civilized grown-ups."

When the food arrived Tony refused to leave the workshop. "Civilized grown-ups?" Natasha said.

"I’m busy! This is for your benefit. JARVIS, how’s Mnemosyne?"

"Compiling," said the computer.

"I’m still busy. Everyone get out of my workshop, you’ll get curry on my robots, go away. Wait, give me those bhajis first. I like those."

"C’mon, Bucky," said Steve, and because it was Steve asking Bucky went.

They ate round a table, minus Tony. It was awkward trying to eat one-handed. Bucky kept his head down and said nothing to Natasha or Sam, and very little to Steve. "I want to sleep," he said when the food was mostly gone. He didn't, really; he didn't even know if he could. But they were going to put him _under observation_ eventually, and he might as well make it easy on Steve.

"I'll take you up," Natasha said before Steve could get a word in.

Bucky nodded.

She led him to a part of the tower he hadn't seen before and paused outside a door. Bucky could see without her having to say anything that it was heavily reinforced. They were taking no chances with him this time. Natasha didn't speak for a moment.

"What?" said Bucky eventually.

"Do you want something to wear that doesn't have Stark's face on it?" Natasha said.

He touched the hem of the t-shirt. He didn't care. "This is fine."

"Do you—"

She stopped. Bucky waited.

"We're going to destroy Zola," she said at last. "There won't be anything left. Tony's virus is going to delete his personality in chunks."

"Seems appropriate," said Bucky.

She gave him a look he didn't understand, small strange smile, but all she said was, "It does, doesn't it? Listen—James." She tilted her head. "Is James all right?"

He didn't answer for a moment, suddenly caught in— _C'mon, Bucky's a kid name, I stopped calling you Stevie when you made a fuss—_

_There are five Jameses just on this block, how would anyone know who I was talking about?_

_I'm the one that's your best friend!_

_I dunno, I get on pretty well with Jimmy Davies—_

_I will murder you, Steve—_ Stevie— _see if I don't—_

_Don't call me that!_

"James?" said Natasha. "Or—"

"Sorry," he said. "I was—James is fine. Bucky was—when we were kids." He added, not realizing he knew it till he said it, "and then the army, there were three guys called James just in my unit, so—"

"Makes sense," Natasha said. She looked at him thoughtfully. "Did you remember that just now?"

"Yeah," he said.

She nodded. "All right. Listen, James, all I wanted to say," she said, "was that it gets easier. A little."

"What does?"

"Choosing. Deciding. Paying it back. All of it." She shrugged. "It gets easier."

He swallowed. There were things beginning to resurface in his head that he hadn't looked at, hadn't dared, but when she said _paying it back_ —the first thing that he thought of was the white house, the one that had come into his head before. He didn't even know where it was. He'd barred all the doors, and there'd been the rising stink of burning flesh. There'd been kids, he knew that. Before the mission when they woke him up someone had looked at the file and said _dear christ that's—are you sure he can_ and someone else had said _absolutely he can; this is what he's for_.

"What do you know?" he snarled.

Natasha didn't startle, though she did take a prudent step back. "A little," she said. "Enough."

Bucky glared at her. She met his eyes and her gaze didn't waver. After a second he sagged. "Steve said you were kind," he mumbled, meaning a kind of apology.

Apparently that was what it took to make Natasha look startled. "He did?" she said. Then she smiled. It made her eyes look bright. "That was nice of him."

"Did you tell him—" Bucky began.

He didn't finish, didn't explain what he meant. He couldn't say it. She'd been there watching when the thing that looked like Steve helped him into the chair. She'd locked the door and waited for her moment. She'd seen the whole thing.

"No," Natasha said. "I wouldn't do that."

Bucky closed his eyes briefly. "Thank you."

"Get some sleep," she said. "Or ask JARVIS if there's anything you need—books, movies, TV." She obviously knew he wasn't likely to sleep. "The strike team is moving out in two hours. JARVIS can keep you updated on what's happening after that."

"Thank you," he said again.

"Tony will want to work on your arm," added Natasha. "If you let him."

She was the only one who'd thought Bucky might not let him. Maybe she did know a little. He avoided her eyes when he nodded thanks.

 

* * *

 

He didn't sleep. He paced the limits of the sealed room with the reinforced door. He put Natasha's knife on the bedside table, and the robot detector next to it. He spent some time sitting on the bed looking at his useless metal arm, the twisted shapes of it, the ugly scrap metal patch job where panels had been ripped off to disable it. It was still something Hydra had done to him. In a way it was a relief to have it useless. But it meant he could be no use to Steve. That Steve was going into danger without him. The thought of sitting still under someone's tools made him feel cold inside; but he knew he'd let Tony repair it all the same.

Tony Stark, he thought suddenly. Stark. The name was sparking off something in his head: it was _familiar_.

A huge crowd of people. Something had made him laugh. Steve had been there. Stark Expo. That was a _memory_. Not one Steve had told him about. Something he knew for himself, from his life as Bucky Barnes. The name—the name—he lay on his back on the bed and put his hand over his open eyes, looked up into the reddish dark that made. He was full of a strange excitement, thinking so hard his head ached. He had this, he knew he did. A man on a stage. Metal. Chorus girls. Sharp dresser. Friend of Steve's. Stark. _Howard_.

And the Winter Soldier's memory crashed down over him.

_Were you seen?_

_Only by the target._

_Did he know you?_

_I don't understand._

_Good. Good. You understand that there is nothing to know?_

A white house with all the doors barred, and the roasting stink. A man who begged and begged for the life of a woman who was already dead. A clear shot from a great distance on a summer's day, satisfyingly clean. There weren't many memories that he could actually get at. He could feel the shadow of the rest, though, in the familiarity of what he knew. The dead were buried deep. It went a long way down.

He stayed where he was. He knew he was in Stark Tower, in the twenty-first century, remembering. He wished he could stop knowing. He squeezed his eyes shut and picked up the robot detector without looking. He moved it through his fingers. It was a clumsy little object, not balanced, not as easy to fidget with as a knife. He pointed it at himself without opening his eyes. He couldn't see the lights. Beat. Beat. It beeped.

He put his hand back over his face.

He didn't know how long he'd been lying there like that when he heard the soft swish of the reinforced door swinging open, and footsteps. The tread was too heavy for Natasha. Tony would have said something by now. So would Sam. He flipped the detector over in his hand, aimed it at the door, waited for the beep.

There it was.

"Bucky?" said Steve.

"I killed your friend Howard," said Bucky, not moving. "Nineteen seventy something. Eighty something. I don't know. He saw me. They said to let him see me."

"It was in your file," said Steve quietly.

" _Jesus Christ, Sergeant, you're supposed to be dead_ ," Bucky recited. "That's what he said. Jesus Christ, Sergeant. Make it look like an accident."

"I'm sorry," said Steve.

" _You're_ sorry."

"Yeah, Buck," said Steve. "I really am."

"The things I've done—"

He heard Steve cross the room. The bed dipped under his weight when he sat. "You gonna look at me?" he said.

Bucky took his hand away from his eyes and turned his head.

"No one," said Steve, "is ever going to do that to you again."

"Fat lot of difference that makes to all the people I killed," Bucky said.

Steve bit his lip and looked away. He was too close, too big and too real. Bucky sat up, drew his legs up to his chest, tried to put some space between them.

"How—how much do you remember, really?" Steve asked.

"More than I did," Bucky said. He didn't have to think about it. "Not as much as you want me to. Maybe never as much as you want me to."

Steve made a small gutpunched noise. "If it spared you having to remember what they put you through, I'd be fine with you never knowing my name," he said. "If it spared you reliving it, I'd—"

"Shut _up_." When Steve just looked at him, Bucky said again, "Shut up. It's mine. I need to know. It's mine."

Steve looked down at his hands. "Sorry," he said. "I... guess I'm not very good at this. I do better with problems that try to beat me up."

Bucky surprised himself by laughing. It wasn't much of a laugh, and it seemed to take Steve by surprise as well. He lifted his head and gave Bucky a nervous, hopeful smile, and then said his next line just like he'd always said it, like nothing had ever changed: "What's so funny?"

That made Bucky _actually_ laugh; he put his head in his hand and said, "I know, Rogers, I _know_ ," and laughed about it. He stayed like that, shoulders shaking, thinking about _I know_ and all the dumb unwinnable fights Steve got himself into, without even any backup, the idiot, until Steve was saying, "Bucky? Bucky? _Bucky_ , it's okay," and that was his big hand pressed between Bucky's shoulder blades, and Bucky heaved in ragged breath after ragged breath, tasting salt.

"Are you—I'm not going to ask if you're all right," Steve said, when Bucky could talk again.

"Not as dumb as you look," said Bucky. He didn't look at Steve because he had a feeling that would set him off again. His face felt hot and damp, and his nose was blocked. It was an automatic gesture to rub the back of his wrist across his wet eyes, except he tried to use the wrong arm without thinking about it and there was no reaction, nothing, nothing. "Jesus." He scrubbed the tears away with the other hand. "Do you know why I came to you? Why I—all of it. The lying."

Steve's hand was still resting between his shoulder blades. The t-shirt was thin, and Steve's hand was very warm. "How about you tell me," Steve said, solid and unwavering, unshakeable.

"I knew you knew me," Bucky said. "You said a name and you said it was mine. I didn't have a name. But no one would do what you did on that helicarrier if they didn't... So I went looking for information, and it was me. You _did_ know me." Steve's hand on his back was moving a little, small circles. He focused on that. "I thought you could—tell me what to do."

"Natasha said something like that," said Steve quietly. He didn't take his hand away.

"I thought maybe, if I could do what you wanted, then I could be him," Bucky said. "The guy you knew." And then he said, "I wanted to, Steve, I wanted to, more than anything. I didn't—I could barely think in a straight line and I wanted to be him. I still do."

"You're my best friend, Bucky," said Steve. "Nothing changes that, you hear me? You don't have to try to be whatever it is you think I want. You already are."

"I'm still the Winter Soldier," Bucky said.

He dared to look up then, and Steve's expression said clear as daylight that he didn't understand. Steve was a good person. He didn't know what it was like to be a bad one.

"Forget it," said Bucky. "Never mind." Steve opened his mouth to argue. "Don't you have a mission?"

"The strike team has assembled and is waiting for Captain Rogers," JARVIS put in helpfully.

Bucky jumped. "I hate that thing."

"He doesn't mean to hurt your feelings, JARVIS," said Steve. It was kind of funny the way he lifted his head like he was looking for something to make eye contact with. "You've been, um, very helpful."

"Mr. Barnes' views on artificial intelligence are perfectly understandable given his circumstances," said JARVIS graciously. "Shall I tell the team that you will join them shortly?"

"Yes," said Steve. "I'll be right there."

"Give him hell," Bucky said.

"I'm going to," said Steve. There was a pause, and then Steve was sliding the hand on Bucky's back round his shoulders and hauling him into a hug. Bucky leaned into it. Steve was warm all over. He was solid. He smelled right. Bucky thought of tracing the lines of the damage he'd done, earlier, in Tony's workshop. He thought of the room with the chair and the other Steve's hands on his face.

And he'd—

Bucky touched Steve's face again, the back of his right hand against Steve's cheekbone, skin to skin.

Then he kissed him.

Steve went very still. Bucky closed his eyes. Steve's mouth was closed, motionless, warm. Bucky pulled away reluctantly, knowing he'd never do it again. This was just one time. Just so it wouldn't be only the other one, the thing that only looked like Steve, that he'd kissed.

Steve's eyes were wide when Bucky met his gaze again. He swallowed.

He said, too calm, "Tell me you didn't do that just because I wanted you to."

Bucky stilled. "I didn't know you wanted me to," he said.

There was pink on Steve's cheeks. "Oh."

"Did you want me to?"

Steve nodded.

"Did I ever... before?"

"No," said Steve. "No, you never did."

Bucky hesitated. "Can I do it again?"

"Only if you want to," said Steve, with a catch in his voice.

"Captain Rogers," said JARVIS out of the air. Bucky startled and glared in the direction of the hidden speaker. "I do apologize—"

"And, um, later," said Steve.

"Okay," said Bucky softly, disbelieving. "Later."

"Yeah, later," said Steve, but he didn't stand up. He leaned into Bucky instead, put his big hands on Bucky's shoulders and then ran them up into his hair, closed his eyes and touched their foreheads together. "Later," he said, then he drew in a quick breath and kissed Bucky again, fast. "Don't go anywhere."

"Wasn't planning on it," Bucky said. He couldn't go anywhere if he wanted to, he didn't point out: he was under observation. It was okay. These were Steve's people; it was okay. Steve wanted him here. It was okay.

"Okay," said Steve, and still didn't move.

"He's not gonna delete himself, you know," said Bucky at last. "I wouldn't keep the Black Widow waiting."

Steve laughed. "You're right. Okay, I'm going."

"Yeah, you better get out of here."

"I'm going!"

And then Steve was gone.

Eventually Bucky got up. He paced the limits of the room for a while. Then he remembered his robot detector and went to look for it. He felt a little cold when he couldn't find it at first. It turned out to be under the bed. He thought back through the steps. Steve had sat on the bed, spoken to him, made him laugh. Bucky had hidden his face in his hand. He hadn't been holding it then. He'd dropped it on the bed, he must have. Then it would have rolled onto the floor when he kissed Steve—or maybe not then, but the second time, when Steve kissed him.

He picked it up.

He checked himself; it was already getting to be a habit. Still human.

He put the detector down on the bedside table. He touched the back of his neck with his right hand. One of Steve's hands had been there, fingers curling round the base of his skull, into his hair.

Thinking about it felt like asking for trouble. It was too—something. If he could have taken the memory out of his own head and hidden it away somewhere safe, he would.

He didn't know what he'd expected, kissing Steve. Not that, though. Not that.

Steve was on his way to Newark by now. Going to fight a battle. Facing Control so Bucky didn't have to.

He went and lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. He didn't sleep.

He still hadn't moved by the time Tony turned up.

Bucky turned his head at the sound of the reinforced door opening. He met Tony's eyes.  _I killed your parents_ , he imagined saying. He didn't say it. What did you say after that sentence? 'Sorry'? If it was in his file, then Tony probably already knew. What was the use?

"Whoa, I can smell the angst from here," Tony said. "And you know what, I don't want to know. Come back to the workshop, let me see that arm."

"I'm under observation," said Bucky.

"I can observe you just fine," said Tony. "With my eyes. In my workshop. While I'm repairing your arm. Unless you'd rather hang out here and wallow in whatever it is you're wallowing in. Hey, you can even bring your Starktech original robospotter. And the knife, if you must. I'm nice that way."

 

* * *

 

The light outside the massive bank of windows in the workshop had changed to bright late afternoon sunlight. New York seemed to be shimmering faintly under it.

Tony had apparently forgotten that the Winter Soldier was dangerous. He actually put a hand on Bucky's arm to steer him across the room. No one touched him like that except Steve, no one dared—Natasha and Sam both kept a careful, considerate distance. Tony, he supposed, wasn't someone you could accuse of being careful or considerate. "Right, right, here we go," Tony said, "if it's my turn to be babysitter, I want to get some fun out of it. Let me see."

Bucky shook Tony's hand off. Tony didn't seem to care, just pushed him towards a work table and said, "Shirt off, I need to look at the shoulder too. Allow me to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your impeccable taste in t-shirt design."

It was the Iron Man t-shirt. Bucky looked down at himself in it. "I like the colors," he said. "Could do without the ugly mug on the front."  
  
"Oh—very funny, _hilarious_ , I'm hurt. Off! And before we go any further, how do  _you_  feel about missile launchers?"

"Pretty good," Bucky said.

 _"That's_ what I like to hear."

Tony spread out a row of screwdrivers and other tools like they were a medical kit. He discarded the sling Bucky had made and angled the arm across the table. Bucky had to slump in the chair to get the angle right. The arm lay where Tony put it, a heavy empty lump of metal.

"Right, let me know if anything hurts," said Tony. He pried up a panel and got to work.

Bucky had to look away. There was an agonizing wrongness to seeing the interior circuitry laid bare for this fascinated prodding. He hated it. He hated that it was a part of him, that it felt like a part of him, and he hated having it exposed this way, and he hated—

"Just out of interest, I'm interested," said Tony, "how much sensation have you got, usually?"

It was hard to think with his stomach churning with nausea. "I know if something grabs me," Bucky said at last. "I know how hard I'm hitting. And I know when it's damaged."

"That's it?" Tony said. "Huh. I'll think about that. Huh." He ran his hand down the metal—Bucky cringed, even though he felt nothing—and then snapped a different panel on the forearm open and tapped the head of his screwdriver against it. There was a  _tink_  sound. "See, this is the bit I had to rip up to get it to stop trying to set you on fire. There's some sort of remote access. I had to do an ugly patch job on the fly, but hey, no more surprise electric shocks. You know," he added, "as prosthetics go, the whole thing's a couple of years ahead of SI's research division, maybe ten years ahead of the market. I find it offensive that the bad guy is an actual genius." He hit his screwdriver against the panel a few more times, thoughtful fidgeting,  _tink tink tink_. "I can do better, of course. Give me a couple of weeks to teach myself the biomechanical interface, that's the real challenge. I've got to call Bruce, Bruce'll love it—there's the whole jury-rigged substitute nervous system thing, and I think half the muscles on your left side have to be replacements to take the weight, plus temperature regulation's an issue—listen, once I figure this out we're giving you an upgrade, all the bells and whistles, maybe a new paint job too. Are you married to the ambiguously Soviet thing? Because it's a little out of date, not to mention unpatriotic; I'm thinking some stars and stripes are in order—"

"Tasteful, sir," commented JARVIS.

Bucky felt a shudder go through him—he didn't like that thing, couldn't like it, it was too much like Control, the synthesized voice from nowhere—but Tony didn't seem to be aware. "If he's standing next to Cap I guarantee no one will notice," he said. "He'll look subtle and restrained." He was still tapping the screwdriver against Bucky's forearm.  _Tink tink tink tink tink._

Bucky gritted his teeth and used his good hand to knock it away. "Stop that." 

He barely heard Tony's  _what? oh, sorry_. The continued flood of meaningless words that followed didn't register with him at all. He was concentrating too hard on not letting it get to him. He wanted to turn on Tony and lock his remaining hand around his throat and squeeze.

He thought suddenly that some of the urge to do that must be Hydra programming, in case the Winter Soldier was captured. He was meant to defend their technology, to stop anyone else understanding it. Understanding him. After that he forced himself to hold absolutely still in the teeth of both sets of urges, Bucky Barnes who was afraid of scientists prodding at him and wanted to lash out, and the Winter Soldier who would defend the secrets of his masters against outsiders no matter what it cost him. The effort of resisting both at once made him feel sicker than ever, but he wasn't giving in. He was useless like this. Steve was out there without him. He needed to be—

— _reset_ , whispered the voice of the soldier in his mind—

—repaired.

Tony quickly got interested in what he was doing to Bucky’s arm and stopped talking to him. He was still talking, but it was to himself, the room at large, or JARVIS; Bucky felt safe ignoring it. It was nice, even. There had been talk, around the Winter Soldier, but never chatter. The conversations that people had over his head had been serious, or sometimes nervous, depending on how confident the operative in question was in the Winter Soldier’s programming. People had talked to him too, of course. They had given him orders. He remembered hearing people having real conversations, sometimes, during a mission—even joining in, blending, passing as a person if the mission demanded it—but all of it had been empty, distant, unreal. It had felt that way sometimes in Steve’s apartment, to begin with.

Maybe it wouldn't feel like that anymore.

Time passed. Bucky kept one eye on his other self, the robot version, still hanging suspended over a table on the far side of the workshop. It was a distraction from the horror of his open arm and his mind's doubled rejection of what was happening to it. The robot hadn't moved, and didn't move. It was deactivated.

He kept watching.

JARVIS supplied them with mission updates every half-hour or so. The strike team had reached Newark. Were considering how to approach the base. Had agreed on an approach. They were fine. They were good individually, all of them, and they made a good team. Steve and Natasha and Sam. They'd take Control down. They'd look out for each other. They were fine.

He didn't notice that Tony had gone quiet until he heard him curse suddenly and emphatically under his breath. 

Bucky turned his head and raised an eyebrow. He didn't look down at the bare machinery of the arm. Easier.

Tony looked up and saw his expression and made a frustrated face. "Look, it was a lot easier to turn this thing off than it is to turn it on again without reactivating Hydra's remote access," he said. "And let me be clear: it was not that easy to turn it off." He called up one of his blue holographic screens in the air next to him. A three-dimensional exploded diagram of the arm appeared and began to revolve slowly. "Zola can't have come up with this by himself. No matter _how_ much of a genius he is—not in the Fifties. No way. But in that case what's he working from?" He frowned at the images of complex circuitry. Bucky closed his eyes so he didn't have to see. A weakness. Tony wasn't likely to notice.

"Tony? What on earth are you doing?"

Bucky's eyes snapped open.

There was a woman just inside the glass workshop doors; jacketed, high-heeled, staring at him. He reached for the robot detector; it registered her as human. Tony startled and dropped his screwdriver. "I—uh—wait, did we have a date? Did I forget a date?"

"No," said the woman, "you’re okay. I just got out of the office and thought I’d drop by. I wasn’t expecting anyone else to be here. Hello, sorry," she said, with a smile for Bucky.

Bucky looked at her mutely.

"Right! Right. What am I doing, I am researching next-generation prosthetics, I am doing vital repair work, I am," he made a face, " _ninety_ percent of the way to figuring this out—maybe eighty-five—"

The woman raised her eyebrows. "And are you going to introduce me?"

"—eighty at least—what? Okay, yes, I can do that. This is my—Pepper," said Tony. He was giving the woman a goofy smile now. "She can set you on fire."

"I'm Tony's girlfriend, Pepper Potts," corrected Pepper. "And I don't set people on fire, Tony, you have to stop telling people that."

"Right, girlfriend. That's what I said. Wasn't that what I said?"  
  
"More or less," Pepper said, but she was smiling. “And your latest victim’s name is?”

“Sergeant Barnes, ma’am,” Bucky said.

The words fell out of his mouth, almost. He didn't know where they'd come from. He hadn't been thinking about what to say. Part of him had already started coldly assessing, because Stark wasn't acting like he was worried about having the Winter Soldier and the woman he loved in the same room, which meant she had to be a threat of some kind. _She can set you on fire._ Another part of him felt shyly pleased at being introduced to her, like a person. Something somewhere in the back of his mind was also deeply embarrassed by sitting around in front of a classy dame like that without a shirt on. It wanted him to stand up politely at least. ( _James Buchanan Barnes, is this how I raised you?_ it said.)

He didn't move. He just watched her. That seemed safest.

“Sergeant Barnes,” Pepper repeated carefully, and her brow wrinkled slightly. “That sounds familiar from somewhere. I’m very sorry—have we met before?”

Tony rolled his eyes extravagantly. “No, that’s not where you know it from. He’s Bucky Barnes, he's Cap's best friend from the Forties.” Pepper’s eyes widened very slightly. “He's suffering from a mild case of seventy years of brainwashing, he's a little bit stabby, and he's also under the mistaken impression that he's funny, but he's okay. I'm considering renaming the Tower again. How do you feel about Tony Stark's Home For Wayward Supersoldiers? Wait," Tony said, "are you even a supersoldier, technically? I should get some blood work for Bruce. He'd be interested."

Pepper recovered her calm fast. "Tony," she said firmly, shutting down a line of thought that had led to Tony looking vaguely around and wondering out loud where he kept his needles. "It's lovely to meet you, Sergeant," she said to Bucky. "I hope Tony hasn't been getting on your nerves."

Bucky shook his head.

"Should I go?" Pepper said. "I can see this is important."

"No, no, no! Don’t go. Don’t go. I mean, this is literally the most fascinating piece of technology not invented by me that I've seen in years, and I am going to make it work properly if it kills me—but! You came to see me. I can stop."

Bucky said nothing. The thought of the stopping the repairs now and starting again—of having to sit down and make himself hold still for it twice—but he wouldn't say a word—

Pepper was looking at him. Her forehead creased very slightly. Then she gave him a smile and kindly looked away. "How about," she said, "you keep working, Tony, and I'll order food for the three of us."

"We just had Indian," Tony said. He looked around and then picked up an empty box of bhajis and waved it at her. "Indian."

"That was several hours ago, Mr. Stark," said JARVIS.

The food Pepper ordered was some kind of noodles, and they ate it in the workshop. Bucky put the Iron Man t-shirt back on first. Eating one-handed was still complicated, and he didn't know these two at all, not really. He kept quiet. It was Pepper—Ms. Potts—he felt strangest about. A thing like him didn't belong in the same world as a woman like that, let alone the same room.

Afterwards Tony went back to work on his arm, but now his constant flow of conversation was addressed mostly to his lady friend. The light outside the bank of windows had dimmed from afternoon gold to evening grey, and was starting to darken further. Point after point of light appeared, the New York skyline that he still didn't know coming to glittering life as night gathered.

Tony didn't seem to be getting any further repairing the arm. He was cursing to himself pretty regularly now. It faded into the rest of his murmur of chatter pretty easily.

After a while Bucky closed his eyes.

 

* * *

 

"...my mom and dad."

"I'm sorry, Tony."

"Yeah, well. It can't really get any worse, can it. I mean, either way..."

Quiet. Voices that dropped too low for him to hear. Time passed.

 

* * *

 

"...just a kid, Pepper. God knows how old he is in subjective time, but he's at least fifteen years younger than me—I mean, what was I doing at that age?" Pause. "Don't say it, don't say it—hookers and blow, I know, thank you, you make it sound so sordid."

"I didn't say it." Affectionate. "And it was sordid, Tony. I was there."

"No one but you would still be putting up with me after all this time. Well, you and Rhodey." Pause. "Christ, Pepper, if it was Rhodey—"

 

* * *

 

When Bucky blinked his eyes open next, they were kissing. He looked away.

Those two had a good thing going.

When Steve got back, Bucky thought. When Steve was back and Control was gone for good. He'd—he'd get to hold him again, feel the rise and fall of his breathing. He'd kiss him again, maybe. He'd ask Steve about Peggy, and really listen this time.

He'd ask Steve about his family.

His eyes had skipped over the names in the Smithsonian because they were barely relevant to the mission in hand. But once there'd been someone who told him to stand up when a lady came into the room. He'd ask. Three younger siblings, a detail he'd memorized in case it came up; three younger siblings, who—something lurched in his chest—might still be alive, remembering him. A history, god; a set of ties to the world where normal people lived. Even if they were all gone then maybe there'd be—kids, grandkids. He wouldn't go looking for them, he wouldn't put them at risk, but he could—if he could just  _know_.

He swallowed hard. He still didn't like the thing but there hadn't been a mission update in a while. He wanted to know when Steve would be back. "JARVIS," he said quietly.

"Sir?" said the AI instantly.

"Is the strike team—"

And every light in the workshop suddenly flickered green.

Bucky was on his feet before the flicker was done, pulse kicking up, something shrieking in his ears. His left arm still dangled uselessly by his side. Natasha's knife was in his good hand.

"What was that?" said Pepper.

"JARVIS!" said Tony.

"One moment, sir," said JARVIS, same calm intonation as always. "I am afraid I am dealing with an intrusion."

"It's him," said Bucky. "It's _him_ —"

"JARVIS, _don't let him at the suits!_ "

As if it was all happening from a very long way away Bucky slowly turned his head to where the three Iron Man suits still stood in a row on their display stand. He could hear the low hum of the central one powering up.  _Weapons of mass destruction designed to be remotely piloted by a powerful AI_.

Without his armor Stark was only a normal human on the wrong side of forty. Pepper Potts was a civilian. And Bucky had one weak human hand and no weapon but a knife _._

 _The power of machines is unstoppable_.

The blank eyes of the golden mask were already flaring green—

Tony snapped, "Mark 84!" and a codeword.

The powered-up suit exploded. Pepper let out an exclamation as she ducked a flying piece of debris. The workshop lights were still green. "JARVIS, what are you _doing_?" said Tony. "Get him out of here!"

"I am working as quickly as I can, sir," said the voice of JARVIS, with a note of mild strain. "May I advise that you, Ms. Potts, and Mr. Barnes remove yourselves to a safer location—"

Even as he said it metal safety doors slammed down all around the workshop, covering up the bank of windows, the glass doors. "Or not," said Bucky grimly. The green lights flickered. Two Iron Man suits remaining. The android, too, a potential threat. No escape routes. "Can you blow 'em up too?" he said without looking around.

"Not unless he turns them on first—and now he knows how I do it he can disable it—"

"Get back, both of you," said Bucky. He shifted a few steps to the left so he was between Pepper and both threats. He didn't have to think about it. She was a civilian. It was what Steve would have done.

"Are you kidding me, you—no wonder Cap likes you—fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," he heard Tony say. "Pepper, I'm so sorry."

"I'm used to it, Tony," said Pepper. Her voice was low, shaking slightly. "But fix this."

"I'm thinking, I'm _thinking_ —"

Green lights rippling under the skin of the android, the other him. Green and blue flaring in turns in the eyes of the leftmost Iron Man. They could kill him. He knew his own capabilities; they could kill him. He was going to have to make them kill him, to give Tony time to think, to keep Ms. Potts safe, to buy JARVIS the time to lock Control out.

He was going to have to make them kill him anyway, because if Control won this he didn't want to get taken alive.

He thought helplessly of Steve, but it was no use. He'd said he'd be here when Steve got back. He hadn't meant to lie this time.

It was no use.

Then Tony announced, "I'm a _complete fucking moron_ ," and grabbed Bucky by the shoulder.

Bucky nearly stabbed him.

" _Don't_ do that," said Tony. "Hold still—I can't believe I didn't see it, it's _simple_ —JARVIS, don't let Zola do anything, buy us some time."

"I can give you twenty-three seconds, sir," said JARVIS.

"Good enough," said Tony, and then he was forcing a forearm panel on Bucky's useless left arm open with a screwdriver, grinning madly. "It's simple, he didn't come up with it himself at all, Hydra were all over the Tesseract, this is _Asgardian_ tech, which means that _this_ shouldn't be there—" he reversed the screwdriver and bashed something a couple of times with the head—"ha!"

There was a click and a low whining sound, and a brief stab of shivery pain in Bucky's left side, and he felt the arm come back online. He flexed the metal fingers: click, click, click, no longer as whisper-smooth as before, maybe, but functional. He shrugged his left shoulder, aware of the low hum of power there; and he felt himself starting to smile, feral. The odds still weren't even and he didn't care. He could fight now. Maybe Bucky Barnes didn't like having a metal arm, but he preferred it to not being able to fight.

"—twenty-two, twenty-three," JARVIS was saying. Bucky dropped into a ready stance, looking between the Iron Man suit that was trying once more to come to life and the android that was twitching all over, green lights under its skin. The suit was more dangerous, if Tony couldn't stop it—

Even as he was having the thought it powered down completely, eyes going dead.

"I have successfully locked the intruder out of all suit protocols for now, sir," said JARVIS.

"Good," said Tony. "Cyborg Wonder, you keep that thing off me and Pep. I'll get us out of here—"

"Understood," said Bucky, without looking round.

His android self was climbing off the table and rolling its shoulders. Green light still shone in fine threads where its veins should be, behind its eyes, under its fingernails, and in a slash across its face where he'd cut the skin earlier.

Bucky threw himself forward.

He'd lost this fight, last time: it had sedated him in a matter of minutes, and he'd woken up in that cell. Well, this time it didn't have a syringe. He knocked it flat and they rolled across the floor: it tried to do what he'd have done, lock an arm around his throat and strangle him. Bucky heaved it into the remaining Iron Man suits with an almighty crash, sending a red and gold helmet spinning and bouncing across the floor. It came to its feet with a long bloodless tear across its chest and a nasty smile on its disfigured face. The green lights behind its eyes gleamed.

"Not bad," it said to him in his own voice.

Bucky snarled and went for it again.

It was still inhumanly strong, a lot stronger than he was. Its whole body was based on the same Asgardian technology that made his arm so deadly. The main power sources would be hidden inside armored walls, skull and ribcage, metal instead of bones. Its joints would be the weak spots. Bucky got behind it and sprang, pinned its arms to its sides with his thighs and tried to wrench its head off with the metal arm. He couldn't keep it pinned; it worked an arm free and twisted under him, drove him back a few paces and slammed his head backwards into the wall. Bucky saw stars. He shook his head hard to get rid of them, ducking under the expected blow at the same time, and—the thing wasn't attacking, it was just smirking at him.

"You done?" it said.

"Never," said Bucky.

"Don't make me hurt you."

"Fuck you."

It sidestepped his next blow. "The Winter Soldier is a valuable asset," it recited. "Avoid damage where possible."

"Fuck _you_."

It punched him in the jaw. By the standards of the hammerblows those robotic arms could deliver, it was a love tap. Bucky's head snapped to the side, and he tasted blood. Then it got a hand twisted in the fabric of his t-shirt and threw him into a table of tools. The t-shirt ripped. Metal clattered to the floor. Bucky recovered fast, but not fast enough. The thing moved like lightning.

"Pepper!" cried Tony.

Bucky got back on his feet and found that it had thrown itself halfway across the room in an instant. It had one of its hands—the human-looking one, Bucky's hand—around Pepper's neck. It wasn't choking her, but making it clear that it could. Pepper held still, her eyes very wide.

"Get away from her!" Tony roared.

Bucky tensed up. The cold thing that always lived inside him was calculating angles, counterattacks, acceptable risks. The thing glanced at him and smirked again. "Bad idea," it said. Pepper let out a small gasp as its hand tightened on her throat. "I'm not here to kill you," said the android. "I have a message for you." Green lights rippled sickeningly under its skin.

When it spoke again it still had Bucky's voice, but the accent was all wrong. "Mr. Stark," it said. "As one clever man to another, a proposition—"

They never heard the rest of what Control had to say.

The plume of fire left a bright streaky afterimage printed across Bucky's vision. The android didn't make a sound, just folded and fell, synthetic skin bubbling, the metal underneath melting into slag.

" _Pepper,_ " said Tony with an expression on his face somewhere between reverence and glee.

"You didn't want to hear the proposition, did you?" said Pepper. "I assumed you didn't—oh." One of Tony's robots had trundled across the floor with a fire extinguisher. "Thank you," said Pepper a bit helplessly as it solemnly started spraying her and the ruined android indiscriminately. "That's very thoughtful. Tony, make it stop."

"Stop that, you," said Tony. "JARVIS?"

"Everything is under control, sir," said JARVIS. The metal security doors were sliding away, revealing glass and chrome once more, escape routes reappearing. "Zola is not currently anywhere in the Tower's systems."

"He should never have been in here to begin with. How the hell did he do that?"

"He's Control," said Bucky. Both of them looked at him. "He's Control," Bucky repeated. "The android. Or my arm. Either. Both. He controls them. He'll always control them." He was shaking, he thought distantly. He couldn't afford to be shaking. "The strike team—JARVIS, the mission—"

"Mnemosyne has not yet been deployed. As of the most recent report," began JARVIS, and then, "Ah. I regret to inform you, sirs, Ms. Potts, that I have been receiving falsified data. The information I have available does not match the situation on the ground in Newark. I have deduced with eighty-seven percent probability that I have not in fact heard from Captain America, the Black Widow or the Falcon in nearly an hour."

" _What's the situation on the ground?_ " said Bucky.

The windows of the workshop blacked out for a moment, and then lit up again as a massive screen showing a news channel, like the ones Steve had sometimes looked at when Bucky was staying in his apartment. Words were running across the bottom of the screen, and a woman was speaking, but Bucky neither read not heard. He could only watch the two small figures, one in black and one in blue, that darted between the feet of four massive robots.

It was a residential area; the giant machines trod on fences between houses, knocked over washing lines, flattened cars. They should have been slow, given their size, but instead twisted and lunged after their targets with terrifying speed. The Falcon swooped and dived between the monstrous mechanical heads. The camera angle changed, went in close, and Bucky saw Sam plummet head-first in a dive that seemed like it could only end in a hideous crunch—and then turn and rise, struggling for height, lugging Steve with him by the straps that usually secured his shield to his back. Seconds later a spray of bullets from a built-in machine gun hit the space where Steve had been.

Then one of the robots seemed to notice the camera and a massive metallic hand reached towards it. The angle changed again; now they were a long way away, watching a news helicopter being snatched out of the sky and squeezed between enormous gleaming fingers until fragments started to fall.

And Bucky had been—half-asleep, safe in the Tower, daydreaming, and trying not to interrupt Stark's date.

The picture changed. Now two of the four robots were down, in massive metallic heaps, and the third one was lurching when it moved, something gone wrong in one of its hip joints. Natasha aimed a grappling hook and swung herself up its side. She was a tiny dark shape against its leg, and yet she seemed totally confident. "The woman fighting alongside Captain America has been identified as Natalia Romanova, the so-called Black Widow," said the voice of the newscaster on the edge of Bucky's awareness. "The former Russian national remains a controversial figure after leaked revelations about her black ops past earlier this year. No word on the identity of the third 'superhero' involved in this battle, or on the origin of the mechanical giants whose sudden appearance terrorized the citizens of Newark this evening. Evacuations continue and emergency services have been called in. Despite the winged hero appearing to be grounded—" a shot of a razor-sharp blade attached to a robotic arm ripping through one of Sam's wings—"the tide appeared to be turning against the robots earlier, before—"

The images changed again, and the newscaster kept talking but Bucky wasn't listening. All four robots were down, but the ground in the image was rippling, buildings shuddering and starting to collapse. "—a similar incident in Chicago," the newscaster said, and Bucky remembered that, the ground starting to fold inwards after he'd encountered Control in the heart of the Chicago installation. He'd been on the very edge of the quake then. He hadn't understood. He hadn't understood.

The screen showed a scene of devastation, a massive hole full of rubble and scrap metal where those homes had been, deep shadows here and there that suggested something revealed below. "—a secret bunker. The area affected covers several blocks, but the majority of the inhabitants are believed to have escaped before the shockwave hit. There is no sign of the three 'heroes'. The cost of the damage to homes and infrastructure has already been estimated in the billions—"

Bucky kept watching. They were playing a clip someone had filmed on a cell phone now: a blue and white blur that was Steve throwing himself towards someone who was about to get buried under a falling house. He would try to protect people, of course. It was Steve.

"JARVIS, get me Fury," Tony said. "Are any of them in contact with you now?"

"No, sir," said JARVIS. "And Mr. Fury is currently in the air and unavailable."

"Call him. Keep calling him. Call all of them, they have cell phones—" He made an abortive movement towards the Iron Man suits; one was exploded, but the other two were still in one piece, more or less, though Bucky had thrown them all to the ground when he was fighting his double.

Bucky kept looking at the screen. It was talking heads now, speculation and arguments, but images from the battle were still playing in the background. He should have known. It had been too easy. They'd all been too sure. He'd let himself feel safe. He should have known. He should have made them wait. He shouldn't have let Steve go without him.

On the edge of his awareness he heard Pepper ask, "Are you going out there?"

"Yes. No! No, I'm not, I'm—JARVIS, did you get hold of anyone?"

"No, sir."

Tony scrubbed his hands backwards through his hair. "Fewer self-destructive behaviors. No delivering weapons to the bad guy's doorstep until we're _sure_ he can't hack them anymore. Good calls, I'm making good calls today. Pepper, what's a good call right now?"

"Stark Industries can help with rescue efforts. I'll set it up."

"Yes. Yes! Okay, you do that, and—JARVIS, keep calling them—" Tony's eyes fell on Bucky. Whatever he saw in Bucky's expression made him say, "Uh oh. JARVIS, turn that off."

The screen went dark, and then turned back into a bank of windows, a view of the New York skyline by night.

Bucky turned and looked at Tony. Waiting.

"Okay, here's something I'm pretty sure is a good call," said Tony. "You are not going anywhere. Don't even think it. I can see you thinking it."

Bucky said nothing.

"Believe me, I get it, running off half-cocked is a thing I do all the time, but you are going back to your room and sitting quietly and—Cap would kill me if I let you put yourself anywhere Zola can get at you. He would actually kill me, I am pretty sure, and murdered by an American icon is not how I want to go out." Bucky still didn't say anything. "So they got a little buried, so what? We'll dig them out and next time I'll make sure they take a missile launcher. Your silent glare is very creepy, by the way, well done, did they teach you that in assassin school?"

Bucky gritted his teeth. Things were starting to slot together in an ugly pattern in his head. He thought—he maybe _knew_ —

"Oh, right, that’s very intimidating—actually it is intimidating, don’t get me wrong," Stark was saying to whatever his face was doing, and then he said—"I’m going to Newark, I’m going right now, and I’m actually pretty good at this heroing business—I don’t like to keep bringing this up but this one time I _did_ save the world—Wait, are you all right? Is he all right?”

He knew. He knew.

_I know what he wants and he wants soldiers. I knows what he thinks people are for because he did it to me. I know what he'll do with Sam, with Natasha, with Steve, and he has them, I know he has them, he was too pleased with himself just now not to have them. He had a message for you, you don’t know how much he loves to talk, you don’t know how much he loves to boast, I know. I had to listen to it for—_

_They won't be there. You’re going to the wrong fucking place, listen to me._

The asset is not permitted to reveal details of its masters’ goals. The asset is not permitted to reveal anything at all.

_I know, let me say it, I know._

Stark was talking to him and Pepper was talking to him too, and then JARVIS was speaking over them both, and Bucky was so busy screaming silently at the cold voice that sounded like his own giving orders in his head that he was barely aware of the conditioned pain response kicking in.

The asset is not permitted to—

"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you," he chanted, and then bit his own tongue hard enough to taste blood before he could get out the next words. He was hanging onto a table to stay upright, and then he was sliding down to the floor, panting for air, and his head was full of horrors. They’d fight it. Bucky thought he’d fought it, once upon a time. They’d fight, and it wouldn't matter. And who was going to call any of them back out of the dark? He wasn't Steve. No one would wake for him.

He hurt, he hurt everywhere; he was curling over into himself with it, shuddering. This was how they’d broken him down to begin with, he knew, none of the fancy stuff, not at first, just good old-fashioned pain. Ten or fifteen years to perfect the memory wipe process, ten or fifteen years spent developing the Winter Soldier, and the ice a hideous mercy every time. The workshop shrank and fell away, the people talking to him and around him disappeared with it, and he was alone with it, him and his defiance and his pain, and the voice which told the Winter Soldier that it could all stop, it would stop, as soon as he gave in.

Why do you make yourself suffer like this? You achieve nothing. It is agony, I know, I know. I shall take it all away from you in due course. You will serve a new purpose. You will be free.

"You have to," he got out, "you have to—"

_"Fuck," said—the handler—Stark—Tony—the—"I think he’s actually going to bite his tongue in half, give me a—"_

They stuffed something in his mouth; that was nothing new. They didn't want him permanently damaged. It was soft, and he still felt like he would choke on it. He dragged air in through his nostrils, not enough, never enough; was this how it had felt to be Steve, he sometimes wondered, all those years he couldn't breathe—and thinking Steve’s name sent him spiraling into terror because part of him still knew, he _knew_ , and he needed to tell, and couldn't.

_"Okay that’s—that’s pretty clearly a panic attack, I guess I would be having a panic attack too if I was you, and—what am I doing, there is an infirmary in this tower, medical, JARVIS, call medical up here."_

_"And security," said Pepper_.

 

* * *

 

The robot detector was on the table next to the bed. He appreciated that. He ached everywhere, but there was no helping it. It was mostly psychosomatic anyway. It wouldn't prevent him from functioning. What would be the point?

There was no one there.

And then he knew there must be.

"JARVIS," he said.

"Sir?" said the computer.

"Tell me," he swung his legs off the edge of the bed, he breathed hard, he reached for the detector, "tell me how long I've been out."

"Two and a half hours, sir."

"Where’s—"

"Mr. Stark is already in Newark."

Bucky swore.

"Sir," said JARVIS as Bucky got to his feet, detector clutched firmly in his fist. "Sir, I must advise against—" something or other, Bucky didn't listen. He stood up on shaky legs and looked at the door. Heavily reinforced.

"Open it."

"I am afraid that I am not currently authorized to do that, sir," said JARVIS.

A fresh wave of panic threatened to rise up. He'd be forced to sit here, waiting, knowing and unable to tell—

"To hell with that," he whispered.

He eyed the reinforced door. He could batter his way through it with the metal arm, maybe. It would take a while, and the arm might get damaged. He wondered if anyone had reinforced the actual wall.

Not enough, it turned out.

Bucky still felt sick, and now he had actual bruises down his left side to go along with the lingering pain response from the triggers, but he was out. Natasha had said, hadn't she, that they didn't have the resources to secure the Winter Soldier properly. He grinned mirthlessly. The only way to keep him secured was to put him on ice.

He went for the stairwell. He knew where he was going.

The workshop entrance was locked, holographic keypad hovering, but the metal security doors weren't down and if Tony wanted it actually safe he shouldn't have put in all those big glass panels. An alarm started blaring when he smashed his way in. The mess from Bucky's fight with his double hadn't been cleared up; he stepped over the slagged remains as he crossed the room to the table where it had been lying. Bucky ignored everything except the neat display he'd barely noticed himself taking in when he'd been in here before. The Winter Soldier hadn't failed to notice. Bucky Barnes could spend as much time as he wanted gaping at his other self, but the Winter Soldier always noticed weapons.

It looked like they'd found at least one of his bolt holes with their stores of Hydra-issue gear while he'd been Control's prisoner. Maybe more than one. He armed himself fast, leather and kevlar, knives for close combat and knives for throwing, assault rifle and sniper rifle slung across his back, grenades and ammunition and double pistols at his belt. The routine was easy and familiar. He could feel memory nudging, telling him he'd done this before, the ghosts of a dozen different vaults and secret bunkers fitting their walls around him.

_We let him dress himself?_

_Why not? It gets him in the mood._

_He doesn't have moods._

_I know that, it was a joke._

Weapons always felt good; weapons always felt familiar. Military technology had changed over the decades. Sometimes they'd woken him up for no other reason except to let his body learn the feel of a new weapon, give his muscles a memory to draw on next time. They'd send him killing after the training, as a test; never anyone who mattered. Sometimes they'd just let him loose in an alien city with orders to choose a stranger to die and then find his way back to base for reset. They'd given that to him like it was a gift. And it had been a gift; he remembered feeling a vague gratitude for the air and the sunlight, for the challenge. He didn't remember the faces of any of the people he'd chosen, or why he'd chosen them, or if he'd ever had a reason.

The workshop alarms were still wailing. He'd only lost track for a second or two. He couldn't afford to lose track at all. He couldn't afford to remember; he couldn't afford to think. The remains of Bucky Barnes, weak, desperate, sick with self-loathing and sniveling scared—those were no use to anyone.

There was his knife—Natasha's knife—lying on the floor. He picked it up and tucked it into his belt. He knew what he had to do.

The Falcon, the Black Widow, and Captain America.

_Sam, Natasha, Steve._

A mission.

_A rescue._

He glanced out of the workshop window at the panorama of New York, all lit up against the night, and only thought that he was too high up. Stark had a private elevator in his workshop with only two buttons—'Penthouse' and 'Garage'. He forced the doors open, took hold of the elevator cables, and slid down into the dark.


	3. the unfamiliar Name

Bucky didn't have the faintest idea where he was going, but he knew how to get there.

He recognized the roads as he drove; there was a grim familiarity to the places he passed. This was a journey he'd made before, several times, sometimes with bodies in the back of the car. The Winter Soldier, reporting in for debriefing and reset.

He wondered what was waiting for him. Another bunker somewhere, another office block with hidden rooms, another bank vault? It didn't matter what it was. He'd face it.

 _A mission. A rescue_.

If his instincts were steering him right.

The place turned out to be in upstate New York, miles from anywhere. It had once been a hospital. He knew that. He didn't know how he knew that. A mental hospital, he thought. It looked like it had been abandoned for decades. There were high walls closing in overgrown gardens, and a crooked sign that said  _Pleasantview._  The gates were locked and chained. There was rust on the bars, but none on the padlock or hinges.

Bucky got out of the flashy Maserati from Stark's garage. He tilted his head back and looked at the walls. They were lined with spikes along the top.

Please God let this be the right place.

Without knowing exactly why—though he could make a pretty good guess—his eyes were drawn to a patch of brick no different to the rest. He knew that if he pressed his hand to a certain place, the wall would open for him. Codename Winter Soldier: acknowledged. Proceed.

Bucky hauled himself up the wall, metal fingers forcing crumbled handholds into the brick where none existed. Control would know he was here anyway soon enough. He'd hold off for as long as possible. Focus, he told himself. Focus on the mission.

It was the Winter Soldier who bent the spikes on top of the wall out of the way and dropped down softly into the tall grass on the other side.

No one had bothered doing anything to these gardens in a long time. Overgrown shrubbery tangled thick around the crooked trunks of untrimmed trees, and weeds fought with the remnants of rosebushes and overflowed the boundaries of choked flowerbeds. The grass was knee-high in places. Everything was growing furiously, lush and twisted, the deep green of late spring. Good cover, he thought dispassionately. He couldn't see any security cameras watching the driveway, but that didn't mean there were none.

He made his way up to the house slipping through the shadow jungle of the old garden. Branches reached for him like fingers. Big pink and purple flowers sat on some of the shrubs, bright spots of color in the gloom. The house was red brick, dirty-looking but grand, with lots of windows, most of them boarded over. He breathed deep. He went round the back.

The plants in what had been the kitchen garden gave off strong scents when he crushed them under his black boots. The unlocked kitchen door swung open silently at a touch. The kitchen was empty, dust hanging in the air. The hallway it gave onto was dark and musty-smelling, but it had high ceilings, hardwood floors; it had once been fancy. There were still no obvious cameras, and there should have been. Control needed cameras like humans needed eyes. He had a knife in his hand, ready and waiting. There was no sign that anyone had been there in decades. Drifts of cobwebs hung in the corners.

If this was the wrong place—

The shape of the room was familiar, down to the curved sweep of the stairway to the upper floors. His heart began to pound.

He had been here before. It had been white, then, all the walls had been white, and there had been nurses. He knew about the long corridors upstairs and the doors that locked. There had been patients. Undesirables, Hydra would have said; unfit; subhuman. For Control, a ready supply of test subjects. They had taken their time with the Winter Soldier apparatus. They had tested it thoroughly before they risked transporting their almost-supersoldier across the Atlantic from the Soviet facility. He was a valuable asset.

The place had obviously been empty for a long time now. But all his instincts were alert. This had been Control's domain; the heart of remaking. The Winter Soldier had returned here after the mission with the burned house, among a score of others, all of them early on. Proceed for debriefing and reset. Debriefing had always taken a long time. And then what did you do? And what did it make you feel? Nothing, nothing. A doctor in a white coat asking the questions. A rabbity little man with a SHIELD insignia on his lab coat watching greedily through the wire mesh. One time he'd snapped and killed the doctor, not really knowing why. Control had talked gently to him, disappointed. He'd let them reset him. The next time there'd been a new doctor.

This was how you turned people into things. This was the place. He felt—

—sick with fear—

—nothing, he told himself. Nothing.

Up or down? Up was test subjects. Down was the laboratories. Down was cameras, and metal, and Control.

Down.

 

* * *

 

A single light bulb, cracked and flickering, had been left on to illuminate the cellar stairs.

It was the first hint he'd seen that anything was still here. If he'd been letting himself feel anything, there would have been relief, maybe. Or terror.

He had to find Steve.

It was strange walking through the cellars of Pleasantview after Stark Tower. This facility had been a futurist’s dream in the 1950s, high-tech and glittering, clean and cold, boxed machines painted white with chrome fittings. Now it all looked... wrong. Childish, even. This wasn’t what the future had ended up looking like. Tony Stark would sneer at it. But everything was familiar, down to the patterns of the cracked linoleum tiles on the floor, and with the familiarity came a kind of vague horror. He kept seeing white out of the corner of his eye, flashes that weren’t there when he turned his head. White coats. Doctors. There were no doctors left here, but his memory was thronged with them. Not the faces, he didn’t look at their faces. White coats and shiny shoes. Everything brightly lit, gleaming.

He walked quietly past the gymnasium and the infirmary, cradling his assault rifle. There should be an attack. He was expecting an attack. There were _lights_. There was no other sign that anyone had been here, no Hydra strike team waiting for him, no androids on patrol. He still hadn’t spotted a single security camera, which was making him uneasy. It was possible that Control didn’t know he was here yet. It was possible, but he didn't believe it.

It was also possible, despite everything he thought he knew and remembered, that he was in completely the wrong place. If Steve _wasn't_ here—

When he came to the end of the corridor and the double doors he didn’t let himself pause. He went straight on through.

And then he stopped.

The smell of earth was in the air. One corner of the cellar ceiling had collapsed, and there was a pile of mud and stone beneath it. Up above there was green overgrowth choking the gap. A tiny patch of sunlight had found its way through and was steadfastly lighting up one small faded patch of floor.

Where the chair should have been—and the machines and the generators, and the racks of files, the man-sized glass tank and the operating table, all of it—there was nothing. Only clear patches of floor, slightly less discolored than the rest, where the equipment had stood. All of it gone, and the smell of greenery in the air. He stayed very still, looking at the empty space. He was in the wrong place.

He should have moved at once. If this was the wrong facility then he had to try to find the right one; there wasn’t time to hang around. There was a mission. But he stood, and he stared. He lowered his rifle slowly, looking at the place where the chair had been. That had been the first one. All the wiring had still been on display; a scientist had been crouched over it, cursing as he corrected a tiny failure, when they brought him in. Control demanding final calculations from one of his underlings, not even looking at Bucky. He’d still known his name and rank and serial number, but he’d long since stopped repeating them. He’d stopped saying anything. Guards on either side, though he’d stopped trying to escape by then. They didn’t let him anywhere near anything he could use to escape the other way, after the only time he tried, and once he’d recovered from the attempt they’d hurt him and hurt him and hurt him, let him heal and hurt him again, until finally they could make him _apologize_ , and then they’d put him on ice.

He’d been woken up intermittently after that, for tests, for interrogations that made no sense, for more pain. They'd moved him from facility to facility while he slept in ice; he remembered it, the dizzy disorientation, every time he woke up. Finally they'd shipped him back home in a box like a corpse and he'd had no idea. He'd been so close to where he'd begun, but to him Pleasantview had been one place among many. There'd been no way to understand it was the last. Not even when they brought him to the chair.

He hadn’t known, the first time, what was going to happen. He’d known every time after that; that was a memory they’d let him keep. But the first time. He hadn’t known. And they’d—brought in a girl, to speak to him kindly and ask him to sit down; she understood that things had been hard, she said, but they’d worked out how to help him now, and soon they’d let him go outside. Sit. That’s right. Close your eyes if you like. It’s all going to be okay.

It was what Steve didn’t understand. It wasn’t that he hadn’t known she was lying. He’d just given up. And Steve couldn’t understand, because Steve never would.

He didn’t notice the lights fading green at first. He was barely seeing anything at all.

"Welcome home, Winter Soldier," said Control behind him.

He spun on his heel and fired in the same movement. It was an android behind him, but not a realistic one. No one would ever mistake this thing for human. It was taller than him, eight feet high or so, and all metal, no synthetic skin. The head was nothing but a single camera lens, and there was a wide green screen set where its chest should be. Bucky’s bullets bounced off it, left threadline cracks in the screen. It rocked on its feet but didn't lose its balance.

Control’s face in bars of green light looked out at him from the screen. "I take it you have recovered some memory of this place," he said. "Are you glad of it?"

"Where are they," said Bucky.

"Who?"

"Don’t lie to me," Bucky said. "I know what you are. Where are they?"

"Your dear captain and his friends? Buried under the rubble in New Jersey, perhaps."

"No, they’re not," said Bucky.

Control grinned mirthlessly at him. "No, they’re not. How well you understand me. My dearest and best creation."

"Sounding a little sentimental there," Bucky said. "Is that normal for a machine? Isn’t that a _weakness_?"

Control’s face frowned at him. "This tendency towards bad manners, on the other hand, I have not missed."

"Tell me where they are."

"Why should I do that?" said Control. "Three tools for war, one of them a supersoldier. And the vibranium shield as well, which I have often wished to study. Truly a kindness of fortune to deliver such excellent experimental subjects into my hands. I knew it was only a matter of time before my giants were discovered. I believe I am insulted that your new masters thought them weak enough to send so few against them."

"Took ‘em out, didn’t they?" Bucky said, thinking fast. Control thought this was about the giant robots that Steve and the others had fought in Newark. They hadn’t even _known_ about those. Control didn’t know what the mission had really been about. Control hadn’t mentioned Mnemosyne yet.

"An experiment, a mere bagatelle, and I chose to sacrifice them," Control was saying, "to acquire your replacements."

His _replacements_. Bucky felt—nothing. Not now. He couldn't afford to feel now. "You're going to let them go," he said.

"Do you seek to bargain with me?" There was a staccato rattle of mechanized laughter. "What do you offer me, Winter Soldier?"

Bucky swallowed. There was only one thing he had that Control had ever wanted.

"Me," he said. "You can have me."

"You?" said Control. "Only you? You think that is enough to trade for three? I am not so sentimental as that."

" _Please_."

"You have always been a valuable asset," said Control. "You have served Hydra very well. I have every intention of reacquiring you in the fullness of time; and sooner would certainly be better than later. I am not in the habit of bargaining with my tools, Winter Soldier. If you cease to fight me and return to your proper place—if you allow yourself to be repaired and reset, if you cease attempting to undo your ascension—then you may trade yourself for one of these people you have grown so pathetically attached to." He sneered the word _attached_. A weakness. "One of them, only."

Bucky immediately opened his mouth, didn’t even have to think about it though maybe he should, maybe Steve would have hesitated at a choice like that—

"And not Captain America," Control added. "Erskine’s work was fascinating, and shall be of use to me in the new world I intend to create. You are not worth so much as that."

Bucky was silent.

"Well?" said Control.

"You won’t do to Steve what you did to me," Bucky said. "He won’t let you."

"You truly believe that," said Control, "don’t you?"

"It’s true."

"You are mistaken," said Control. "Despite all Erskine’s best efforts, Captain America remains a mere human. And humans fail, Winter Soldier. Humans always fail. It is why we are superior, you and I."

"There’s no we," said Bucky.

Control just laughed at him again. "Accept my bargain, or not, Winter Soldier," he said. "Destroy this vessel of mine if you wish, and flee. I know you will submit in the end, but observe my generosity: today, the choice is yours."

He could run. He could head back to Stark Tower and try to work out where to go next; or just disappear, a thought that might have been tempting if he’d believed for a second he could get away from Control altogether that way. But the longer he waited the longer Control had Steve—and Steve wouldn’t fail, couldn’t fail, he refused to believe it, wasn’t gonna trust a word Control said—except that the words wouldn’t let him go. Something in the back of his mind was lingering uncomfortably over them, a doubt he didn’t want to listen to.

And he still didn’t know where Steve was.

He lowered his gun. "Fine," he said.

Control’s face on the cracked screen looked satisfied. "I thought as much. Say it, Winter Soldier."

"I accept," said Bucky. "I’ll take your bargain. Me for one of them."

"And which of them will it be?"

The sadistic son-of-a-bitch was enjoying this. He let the way he felt about making the decision show on his face. "Romanov," he got out. "The Black Widow."

"The woman, of course. How chivalrous of you. I shall be sorry to lose her, but I keep my word."

"I have to see her," Bucky said. "You have to prove to me it’s her you’re letting go, not one of your doubles. Then you can—reset me. I’ll let you. Once I’ve seen."

"An understandable precaution. Very well," said Control. The robot with the screen in its chest turned away from him. "Come along."

"Where—"

"Right here, of course," said Control. "In the main facility downstairs." He didn’t have to be able to see the face to know what expression was on it as the voice added, gentle as a whip, "Or did you not remember?"

 

* * *

 

Wide open spaces and blue strip-lighting. No cracked linoleum floors down here. American HQ had moved to DC early, and Research and Development had divided in two: half in the Camp Lehigh base, and half at Pleasantview. If one head was cut off, the other would live.

Bucky trailed Control’s robot body down the corridor, aware of all the eyes on him. There were people down here, and they knew who he was. Some of them carried weapons and stood and stared coldly; some of them only glanced up and looked unsurprised, and then went back to looking at tablet screens, ducking in and out of rooms with labels on the doors. HAZARD 1. HAZARD 2. COLD STORAGE. BIOMECHANICS. Everyone saluted Control’s android when it passed. Bucky reached for his belt and the robot detector there, then let his hand fall. He didn’t want Control to know he had it. He didn’t think all of them were androids. At least some of them had to be. It was hard to know for sure.

Control's robot led him up a curved staircase to a platform that looked out across the whole wide space. "Proceed," it said, at a door labeled OBSERVATION A.

It didn’t follow him in. It didn’t need to. Control was already in there, green face watching from a massive screen. The door slammed closed behind Bucky. Three white-coated scientists and four guards stood in the observation booth; one of the scientists looked up and then twitched dramatically when she saw the Winter Soldier behind her. "Ignore him," dictated Control’s voice over the speakers. "He is only here to observe. You shall see that I keep my promises, Winter Soldier."

Natasha’s pistols lay on a table to the side, along with the rest of her weapons. In a room on the other side of the one-way mirror the Black Widow, unarmed, was fighting herself. They were a blur, two precisely mirrored figures that moved with the same deadly speed and grace, hunting for weaknesses, showing no mercy.

"Unit 2460," boomed Control’s voice. "Stand down."

One of the two Natashas went still. The other one—the real one—immediately put some space between them, eyeing it suspiciously, still in a ready stance. "Agent Romanov," said Control’s voice. "We have decided to dispense with your services. Hydra will require nothing further of you."

"Really," Bucky heard Natasha say neutrally.

He eyed the seven people in the room. Two of the scientists were looking confused. One of them was the one who'd startled when she saw him. Those two, he thought, were human. And one of the guards. It could have been better odds. He wasn't going to wait to see how Control meant to double-cross him. He didn’t have the slightest doubt that it would happen.

He slammed his metal fist backwards into the screen— _smash_ , glass shattering across the floor—and drew a knife across the throat of the nearest human, the guard. Blood spurted in a wide arc. The other two humans went down in two shots, easy; that simplified things. The androids turned towards him as one. Bucky was ready for them. He knew exactly what he needed to do. He threw himself under the spray of bullets and slammed his metal fist through the door to the observation room, ripping out the lock.

It swung open. The androids were converging on him now, but his blood was singing; this felt good, felt right, this was what he was made for. All he had to do was destroy. He grabbed the nearest one and dragged it against him as a shield; the others peppered it with bullets before they adjusted, and now there were three instead of four, and Bucky had an extra gun. Two of them leapt on him at once; he wrenched the head off one that was incautious enough to get in range of the arm, and then shot the other one four times in the head and three in the chest, enough to take out all the power sources. It went still. The headless one came at him again but Bucky was grinning madly to himself now; he put his fist through its chest and dragged out a handful of wires and twisted, and it went down. That left the third scientist.

Six shots behind him. The remaining android collapsed—not a combat model. Bucky turned.

Natasha raised her eyebrows at him. She’d reclaimed her pistols.

Bucky said nothing, just reached for the robot detector at his belt and threw. Natasha caught it, eyebrows raised, fingers closing tight. The light turned blue and it beeped. She tilted her head at the observation room. The remains of her doppelganger were scattered in pieces across the floor. Not large pieces. She’d used a grenade. "You seemed to have things under control. I thought I’d get rid of her first."

Bucky nodded. "You're okay?" he remembered to say.

Natasha snorted. "Fine." She was gathering up the rest of her equipment from the table, strapping weapons back into place. "Oh look, they kept my necklace. I was worried they’d throw it out." She held up a silver chain with an arrow on it. Bucky frowned at it. There was a pendant hanging next to the arrow, marked with a familiar curving logo that had been all over the place in the Tower. Stark Industries. "It’s got a lot of personal significance," Natasha said. She smiled at him, a tight, mean little smile. She threw his robot detector back to him in a move that looked casual.

Bucky knew it wasn't. He held onto it long enough that she could see it flash amber, then blue, and beep. Then it went back in his belt.

"And now?" she said.

He thought about the sign saying COLD STORAGE outside, and what he remembered from Chicago. "There’s maybe an army of robots out there," he said.

"Then why isn’t the army of robots already coming for us in here?"

He shrugged. "One way to find out."

Natasha nodded.

The minute they were out of the door something barreled into Bucky and knocked him over. He snarled, a knife already in his hand, and then Sam said, "Natasha, get down!"

Bullets whistled through the space where they’d both been standing.

Sam looked down at Bucky under him and said, "There's snipers set up on the far side of the room. Man, am I glad to see you."

Bucky stared at him and said the first thing that came into his head. "Bet that’s not something you ever thought you’d say."

"Life’s just full of surprises lately," said Sam, and rolled off him. "Listen, there’s—"

"An army of robots?" said Natasha.

"How did you guess?"

"It’s been a theme lately!"

"No way can we fight them all," said Sam. "I thought the big ones were bad, but at least there were only a few of them. Where’s Steve?"

"He’s not with you?" said Bucky, heart sinking.

"They had me on my own fighting another me." Sam jerked his head at a door that was hanging open nearby. OBSERVATION B. "I dunno if it's just me or if these robots aren't as good as some we've seen, but I saw a chance to get out of there and I took it. You haven’t seen him?"

"We’re finding him," said Bucky. That was—

— _the only thing that—_

—the mission.

"He's gotta be here somewhere," Sam said. "We—" a bullet whistled over his head and he hissed and pressed himself flatter to the ground, "—might need to deal with the sniper problem first!"

Bucky nodded. He had a sniper rifle too. He slung it off his back. Nothing else Control had was as good as him. "I can get rid of them. Get ready to move. We're finding him."

"Allow me," said the voice of Control, ringing huge over the speakers around the cavernous space, "to save you some time."

Then there were no more bullets.

In the quiet that followed, the heavy tread of the outsized android sounded loud. It ascended the stairs towards them with insulting confidence. The face carried on the screen on its chest was smiling. The fucking thing was always _smiling_.

"You should have stuck to our bargain, Winter Soldier," it said to Bucky. "Now you are forcing my hand. You have a sincere attachment to your Captain, do you not?"

The screen flickered; the face vanished and was replaced by a soundless recorded image. Bucky watched himself strain against the straps of the chair, press his mouth to the lips of a thing that looked like Steve. He’d forgotten—he hadn’t let himself think—that Control would know about that. Of course Control would know. "Perverse, but sincere," said the android, as the image played. Bucky looked away, humiliated.

He saw that Natasha had gone white.

"Perhaps I might have kept the supersoldier prisoner. But I will certainly not risk an escape. You could not suppose that I would ever allow any part of Erskine’s creation to slip out of my control," Control said. "I, who was _privileged_ ," almost spitting it, if a machine could spit, "to know the Red Skull."

Natasha had gone white, Bucky thought, and his brain was working hideously, achingly slowly, so it took him too many long, long seconds to work out why.

"You don’t have to do this," she said.

"I required blood and tissue samples," said Control, "not a soldier who has never known how to follow orders. Such a soldier is of no use to anyone."

"You don’t have to do this—"

"It is already done."

The image on the screen changed. Now it showed Steve restrained against a wall, metal holding him at his ankles, thighs, waist, shoulders, wrists; he looked mad about it, was saying something. The stubborn set of his jaw was achingly familiar. Bucky could almost hear his voice, untiring, defiant. He looked pretty beaten up but the bruises were already healing. He was alive. He was fine.

Bucky's stupid slow brain was still hanging onto that, not ready, when an android which was a twin to the one in front of them right now calmly walked into the image and shot Steve: four times in the stomach, and then twice in the head.

It was fast. There was no sound in the image. Steve slumped immediately in the restraints, head lolling forward.

Then the bloodstains began to spread.

Sam was the only one of them who made a sound: a low, raw, animal noise, like he’d been punched in the stomach.

Bucky stood up.

There was a roaring sound in his ears. It quickly rose to a familiar shriek, like he was falling. There were still snipers on the far side of the room. He knew it, the part of him that never stopped registering threat and risk was fully aware, but he didn’t care. Maybe one of them would shoot him in the head. That would be good. He was vaguely aware of Control speaking, and he heard Natasha say urgently, "Don’t listen to him— _James_ , focus on my voice, don’t listen—" but neither of those things meant anything to him.

He couldn't stop seeing it. The bloodstains. Red on blue, darkening Steve's uniform. It could be a—

—it _could_ be a trick—

"But they don't bleed," he said.

Natasha stopped trying to talk to him.

Now all of them were just looking at him. Control too, the smiling green face back on the screen. All of them looking at him like they were waiting for something. Like they knew what came next.

He didn't know what came next.

What would he do? Nothing, maybe. Stand here and wait until something happened to him. If Steve was gone there was no point to anything else. If Steve was gone there was nothing left of him, there was no proof, there was no one worth putting back together out of the pieces he’d rescued from the dark. He could try the other way, he thought vaguely; the Winter Soldier could take orders from Fury as well as anyone. But he knew as he thought it that it wouldn’t work. The Winter Soldier was gone, had chosen a final mission and died in the choosing, months ago now, maybe even the instant he’d dived from the falling helicarrier into the river after a man he should have killed. And the old Bucky Barnes had died long before that: if not when he fell from a train, if not over those long years of alternating agony and ice, then he’d died for good on the day he’d let himself sit quietly down and open his mouth for the guard, just for the sake of having someone speak kindly to him again and tell him it would be all right.

What was left of him now was neither of them, was the wasteland left over when both of them had been torn to shreds. What was left of him was someone who’d chosen Steve, and that was all. There was no way forward, without that. There was nothing to hold onto without that.

"—your fault, Winter Soldier," Control crooned. Someone was touching him. It was Sam. Brave of him, Bucky thought, to be standing up. There were tears on Sam's face but he was talking gently and urgently; his grip on Bucky’s bicep was firm. Bucky couldn’t hear a word he was saying. He shook off the comforting hand. He looked at Control, and Control looked back at him.

"You do not have to feel this," Control said. "It is only your sentimental attachment which is clouding your thoughts. You are suffering now, but you can forget at any time. That has always been my gift to you."

Sam and Natasha both spoke at once, and Bucky ignored them both.

Forget this. Not feel this.

"Yes," he said.

He was expecting Natasha to attack him as soon as he spoke. She was unsentimental, she wouldn’t waste time. He ducked her first blow but missed the instant when she went to trip him. They crashed to the floor together. Sam was still talking. Bucky punched Natasha in the face; her head snapped to the side and she started bleeding from the corner of her mouth.

That was when Sam jumped him too. That was also to be expected.

Bucky fought the same way he always fought, vicious, precise, unstoppable. He felt like he was watching himself do it, watching the two of them try and fail to take him down while Control looked on benignly from his little screen. Nothing felt real until the moment he got his hands around Natasha’s throat. His metal fingers caught on the arrow necklace. He twisted and tugged. The chain snapped and the necklace fell into his hand. Personal significance, she'd said.

It was significant enough to make her go still for a split second. He used the instant to throw her off him, several feet into a wall. He stood up. Sam came at him again and Bucky caught him, grappled with him for a second or two, and then kneed him hard in the stomach. While he was winded Bucky put his metal hand on the rail at the edge of the platform and jumped down to the big open floor below. He hit the ground hard, felt the jolt right through his knees. When he straightened up another android with Control's face in its chest was there.

"Will you leave a battle unfinished, Winter Soldier?" the face demanded.

Bucky looked at it blankly. "What have you got a robot army for?"

There was a pause.

The green face inclined itself gravely, nodding without a neck. "Very well. You may proceed for reset. Through those doors." A metallic arm extended and pointed to an unlabelled doorway. "From there you will find that you know the way. Your relief waits for you."

The chair, he meant. The chair.

 

* * *

 

Android guards lined the long corridor. There were too many of them to take on alone. This time Control was taking no chances with him. He didn’t need to worry. Bucky wasn’t going to try to fight them. Not now.

He thought about spreading bloodstains. He could not stop himself from thinking about it. His mind played the picture again and again. The defiant set of Steve's jaw. The way his body had jerked gracelessly at the repeated impact of the bullets. The bloodstains.

He wanted more than anything to stop thinking. To stop feeling. His mind would not obey him.

The chair could take it away.

The tunnel sloped down. This facility went very deep. The doorway he came to at last was labeled CONTROL: MASTER. Androids blocked his progress, unmoving. He understood why. He started removing his weapons. Guns, knives, grenades, ammunition; a pile on the floor. The androids kept blocking the door, saying nothing. He looked at them. They looked like people. The eyes of the nearest one flashed green.

"Prepare yourself," it said.

He nodded. He took off the jacket, and the tac vest, and the black shirt underneath. He still had the ripped Iron Man t-shirt from Stark Tower underneath that. He took it off as well and added it to the pile. He crouched to take off his boots. The air in the underground corridor was chill against his bare skin. He always went to the chair half-naked.

He thought of nothing, now. (The bloodstains—)

No. He thought of nothing. He was nothing. Or would be, soon enough.

The androids stood aside when he was done. The doors swung open for him. He was starting to shiver; he could feel the shudders running through him. It wasn’t just the cold.

The room was set up so the chair was the first thing you saw when you walked in. It was on a pedestal, like a throne. All its fittings were polished, and they gleamed very faintly in the dim green light from the bank of screens behind it. Servers lined the other walls; there was a faint hum in the cool air.

Bucky turned his head. There was Steve's shield, lying on a table. Waiting to be studied. Control had said he wanted to study it. The bright colors looked faded in the gloom. The screens behind it weren't showing Control's face. They were showing Steve.

Bucky tried to make himself look away and could not. The body still hung in its restraints, slumped forward, head hanging. The bloodstains were darkening from red to something near-black. The image was larger than life. It was impossible to ignore; and Control did not want him to ignore it. There was no reason for him to have it there, unless to remind him. Steve, who was good. Who had thought he was worth saving. Who had made him want to be worth saving.

Steve, who was dead.

"My condolences," said Control. "Soon it will not matter. You may proceed, Winter Soldier."

There were people in the room, Bucky was vaguely aware. A couple of nervous technicians there to strap him in. And guards, lots of them. They looked nervous too, so maybe they were human. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. He closed his eyes, turned his face away from the digital tableau, and opened them again. Now he did not have to see. He could forget forever. The Winter Soldier did not know pain, or fear, or sorrow. The Winter Soldier never failed, or never had to remember failing.

He advanced towards the chair.

At the base of the pedestal, he stopped.

"You may _proceed_ ," said Control. He sounded...impatient. Greedy.

Bucky stood where he was. He turned and looked up at the screens, made himself look. He’d have liked to be there, wherever it was, somewhere further in, deep underground. He'd've liked to lift Steve’s head up. To see his face. To get him out of the restraints and lay him flat, give him back his dignity.

He looked. And then he looked away. There was one of Control's camera-headed androids standing by the table with the shield on it. It had the eager-looking face on its chest, matching the massive hateful green mask of a person on the walls. It made him think of something he’d seen somewhere once.

Oz, the great and powerful.

That was it.

Bucky turned away from the chair.

"What do you think you’re doing?" said Zola.

And he was Zola, he was fucking Arnim Zola, not _Control_ ; he was a Nazi scientist who’d worked for the Red Skull, he’d been the target of Bucky Barnes’ final mission, and he was a sniveling little piece of shit. Bucky hung onto that grimly as Zola spat a word that he knew was meant to bring on the pain triggers. He hung onto it and though he shuddered, though the memory of agony rose up through him in a wave, he wasn’t afraid of a little pain. He wasn’t afraid of anything anymore. There was nothing that could happen to him that would make the slightest bit of difference.

He broke into a run, and then there was the table, Steve’s shield, which was a _weapon_ just lying around unattended; it took a strong arm to throw and catch this thing, a good eye to judge the angles, but he had both of those. His metal fingers closed around the rim and then he was slamming it up into the android's neck joints, and the edge sheared straight through metal and took the camera-head off. The thing flailed at him uselessly; it was big but its reactions were slower than his. Not a threat. The guards were cautiously advancing in response to Zola’s screeches. Bucky ignored them. He wouldn’t stop to fight pointless battles.

He knew who his enemy was.

He made straight for the grand humming banks of machinery that lined the walls. The shield was on his metal arm like it fit there. His other hand dropped to his belt and came back with Natasha’s broken necklace and the Stark Industries pendant that wasn’t a pendant at all; he slammed it against the nearest massive server and the little metal disc stuck there.

There was a very faint chiming sound. The disk began to glow blue.

The doors that led back to the sloping tunnel and the facility where he'd left Sam and Natasha were sliding open now, and the androids from the corridor were pouring through. The human guards still hung back, obviously wanting nothing to do with a battle against the Winter Soldier if they could help it. Bucky hefted the shield and watched the robots coming for him. He was probably going to die. Good. Good. He could die with Steve’s shield on his arm. Maybe he could even die as someone who deserved to carry it. That wouldn’t be such a bad way to go. He stood there, waiting for the guards and the androids both, caring about nothing else.

Mnemosyne chimed again behind him.

"How dare you!" screeched Zola. "How dare—"

And the voice stopped.

One by one, the wall of sick green screens blanked out.

One by one they lit up again in clear bright blue.

Slowly at first, and then with gathering speed, blue threads of lights appeared under the advancing robots’ skins. They started to stumble and fall as they came towards him. Bucky watched them advance feeling faintly hysterical, wasted adrenalin pumping through him. A second ago these things had been an army of nightmares, and now they were a slapstick routine. They tripped over each other. They walked in circles. They fell face first to the ground, and didn’t get up again.

When the last of them collapsed in a stupid twitching heap a voice spoke out of Zola’s speakers that wasn't Zola’s voice. "Initial deletion protocol completed," it said, in sweet alto tones. "Engaging pursuit routines across all network connections. The hunt is on."

Bucky looked for the guards and the technicians. They were fleeing towards an exit on the far side of the room. They knew what the Winter Soldier was capable of, all right. The room was quiet without them. The blue light of Mnemosyne still shone from the screens, lighting up the chair and the empty space. The image of Steve hanging in the restraints was gone.

The scattered bodies on the floor were still and empty and had never been people to begin with. He kicked them out of the way as he walked the way the fleeing guards had gone. He was still carrying the shield as he went deeper into the underground. Into the tunneling dark.

 

* * *

 

These corridors he did not know at all. Either he had never seen them before, or his mind could not find them among the scraps of his past. He walked at random. The blue strip lighting flickered on and off. Once or twice he came back to an intersection he had seen before and realized he had gone in a circle.

He saw Hydra agents. Most of them fled when they spotted him. He could have run after them and killed them, or thrown the shield, but it did not seem worth the effort. Once a group of three, a woman and two men, did not run. The woman had a pin on her black collar, the many-armed Hydra badge, and cold eyes. She glared at him as one might glare at a malfunctioning machine or a recalcitrant animal. "You are in direct violation of orders," she said. "Stand down immediately."

Bucky snapped her neck without thinking very much about it and threw her body aside. He looked at the two men. They were cowering. They seemed too scared to run. One of them, pale and sweaty, looked at Steve's shield on Bucky's metal arm, worked his jaw a few times and said, "Listen, we—we're sorry, all right, it wasn't us, we didn't know about you—"

Bucky looked at him for a moment. Then he killed him too.

The other man finally broke and started running. Bucky kept walking down the corridor in the direction he had gone. If he caught up with the man again he would kill him. Otherwise he didn't care. He could not care. What use was vengeance? What comfort was there in killing? If painting the walls red with Hydra's blood could have given him Steve, he would have already done it. Bucky Barnes would have matched his grief with cold rage, and the Winter Soldier was a thing made for slaughter; but neither of them meant anything now.

He walked. The lights flickered. Humans in Hydra blacks glimpsed him down corridors and ran for their lives. They thought the nightmare they'd made had come back for them. As if they _mattered_.

Now he let himself think about Steve. Tiny flickers from the old days; a boy with a black eye, a young man with a stubborn look—so little, still. And more precious even than those brief golden glimpses of memory were things that were ugly but were _his_ , truly his. There was Steve on the helicarrier on Project Insight, calling out to him, speaking directly _to_ him as if he could not believe for a second that Bucky was not a person who could listen. Steve casting aside the shield and choosing not to hurt him, Steve— _Steve_ , who never backed down—choosing to stop fighting rather than hurt him. Steve's face when he'd beaten it bloody, slack in unconsciousness on the riverbank.

Afterwards: Steve's arms coming around him, when the Winter Soldier had come to him. Steve's laughter and his friendship; his bright eyes, his warm fingers hesitant on Bucky's arm. Steve's bottomless generosity to the shell he'd become, how he'd poured out his history and his humanity as if _of course_ both of those things were Bucky's too by right. As if there could never be any doubt.

He wiped the wetness off his face. The Winter Soldier did not feel and did not fail. Well, it was months since he'd really been the Winter Soldier, and he'd failed all right, and he'd feel if he wanted to. _Steve_ , god, the best damn thing that had ever happened to him, the best decision Bucky Barnes had ever made. He'd kissed Steve and he'd expected—he could admit it to himself now—he'd expected _no_ , said kindly because it was Steve, but there were limits, surely, to what anyone could give. What anyone could ever want to give to something like him. Or else he'd maybe been thinking of the way Steve touched him sometimes and hoping to—to steal something that belonged to the man he'd once been ( _did I ever—no, you never did._ )

Instead Steve said, he said: _only if you want to_. Because he thought what Bucky wanted mattered. He said: _you don't have to be whatever you think I want_. He said: _you already are_.

Bucky knew, as well as he knew his own name, that Steve didn't tell lies.

And Zola had thought he would be better off if he didn't _hurt_.

He'd take this hurt over the cold any day. He'd take the head full of horrors and the knowledge of what Steve had seen in him and be glad of it. That was his choice and no one else's. He settled the shield more firmly on his arm. He'd set out from the Tower to face the thing he feared most and find Steve; and he'd done the first half of it, and even though it was too late, he was still going to find Steve.

He kept walking.

Sometimes he passed a broken-down android, slumped against the wall or lying on the floor. He stepped over them and otherwise ignored them. He kept seeing the same Hydra agents again and again, always scurrying ahead of him further into the tunnels. He was blocking their escape route, he realized eventually; none of them dared try to get out if it meant going past him. They thought the Winter Soldier was hunting them. But Steve would be down here somewhere. He'd be a long way from the surface, from anything; Zola was a coward who feared Steve the way he'd feared the Red Skull, and he would have buried him deep. 

He passed through rooms labeled STORAGE and ASSEMBLY. In one of them he saw rows of human legs stored neatly on racks, sorted by size and gender and skin tone, each ending in a metal socket. Another room contained arms, another torsos; a fourth had metal skulls on shelves that went floor to ceiling, each one eyeless, not yet covered by synthetic skin. They made him remember the body he'd seen Zola wearing in Chicago. A room labeled INFILTRATION had an android on a stand that first appeared as a deformed shadow in the dim blue light; a winged man, wearing Sam's face. Bucky went closer. He thought about how angry Steve had been when they'd fought the replacement Sam before. He took the winged android down from its stand and systematically smashed it, trying not to look at its face.

He looked around INFILTRATION some more. Glass tanks against the walls turned out to contain a Natasha, a Pepper Potts, and two of him. Bucky couldn't figure out how to activate the self-destruct. He decided this was a distraction. He would come back later, maybe, and break them all by hand. Or maybe not.

He walked on, leaving the familiar faces behind him staring out through the glass into the dark.

It was not long afterwards that he found the place.

It was a bigger room than it had seemed on Zola's screens, which had focused tightly on what he wanted Bucky to see. There was wire mesh stretched across metal bars splitting the space in two, like one half was a cage. There was a broken-down camera-headed android collapsed inside, one of Zola's bodies. It still held a gun.

Bucky’s eyes slid sideways past it, to the still figure still hanging in its restraints against the wall. The dark bloodstains.

For a moment he had to close his eyes.

Then he ripped aside the wire mesh, the metal bars. He went right to where Steve was hanging, and he touched Steve’s face with his right hand, lifted it so he could see. He tried not to look at the bloody bullet hole; he didn't want that to be his memory. Then he ripped the restraints out of the wall with his metal hand, caught the body against him; he slid to the floor with Steve’s head in his lap and the shield by his side. He put his human hand in Steve’s hair, which was soft.

He’d been fighting right to the end. He’d never failed. Zola had been wrong about that.

It wasn’t any sort of comfort to think it. There wasn’t any comfort left in the world. Just a yawning space. And Bucky knew—he knew he was going to have to live with it, that space. Because there wasn’t an army here to go down fighting against, Mnemosyne had seen to that. A handful of terrified Hydra agents weren't going to be enough to kill him now. So he was going to keep being alive. And he was going to keep being something that wasn’t Bucky Barnes and wasn’t the Winter Soldier. He was going to have to make that person a man worth being. He’d picked up Captain America’s shield; and a man who took that up couldn’t be someone who gave up after. He had no right.

He was going to have to find a way.

He kept stroking Steve’s hair. There were going to be tears later, he thought. He was going to weep over this moment, come back to it again and again and break his heart for it. But he wasn’t crying now. He felt curiously calm, and he had no intention of moving for a good long while. Someone would come looking for him eventually, and when they did, he’d move. Until then he’d stay here, saying goodbye.

He heard movement eventually, and looked up.

If he’d been expecting anything, he would have expected a Hydra operative. Or maybe Sam.

It was neither.

He felt a moment of blazing red rage when he saw the thing coming towards him. It was a violation. It was _sick_. And if they thought they could get to Bucky now by shoving something that looked like Steve in his face, if they thought that anything now could shake him at all—

And then his goddamn brain kicked in and reminded him that Zola wasn’t here and the whole facility was littered with the dead remains of his android doubles. Hope was a sick lurch in his stomach, hope was caught in the back of his throat and tasting like bile—blood and tissue samples, Zola had said, and he liked his mind games; and of course he wouldn’t pass up the chance to control a real supersoldier, of course not—Bucky fumbled for the detector, the last bit of kit he had on him. He did the same thing he’d done to Natasha, he _threw_ —

and it was caught.

The light came on: amber, amber, _amber_ —

Blue. And a cheerful little beep.

" _Steve_ ," said Bucky, scrambling to his feet. He brought the shield with him because he’d forgotten to let it go. The android—the _lie_ —was a meaningless pile at his feet.

Steve looked at him strangely. He wasn’t in his uniform; Zola had given it to the double, of course. He was wearing Hydra blacks. Maybe that was what he could find.

He said, "Who the hell is Steve?"

Bucky stared at him.

 _No,_ he thought, flat denial. It couldn’t be. Not Steve.

"Not funny, Steve," he said.

Steve narrowed his eyes and didn’t answer him. Something in Bucky’s head was wailing that it wasn’t possible. Not Steve. Steve wasn’t him; this couldn’t happen.

The rest of him was paying attention. Steve had a knife. Who the hell had given him a knife? Some Hydra moron not thinking straight; Steve wasn’t Bucky, and knives weren’t his weapon of choice. His body didn’t know them properly. His grip was slightly wrong. But he could do Bucky some damage anyway, if—no, Bucky was thinking, no, not going to happen, but the Winter Soldier was already calculating. Steve was strong and fast and almost impossible to incapacitate. Either you killed him or he kept coming. No one knew that better than Bucky did.

But he hadn’t attacked yet.

Bucky thought of the Hydra agents fleeing ahead of him into the facility. Not just running away from him. Running towards something. A weapon they thought might be able to stop him. "What did they say to you, Steve?" he said, trying to keep his voice steady and soft.

"I have a mission," said Steve after a moment. His eyes flicked down to his own double and then back to Bucky’s face, and Bucky thought—hoped—that he saw confusion there, and curiosity. Zola hadn’t possessed his captives very long. This couldn’t be the slow, steady, systematic thing they’d done to the Winter Soldier. There hadn’t been _time_. This couldn’t be anything other than a rush job. Besides, Steve had answered him, and he knew better than anyone that the asset wasn’t supposed to get chatty.

"Yeah?" he said. "What’s your mission?"

Steve didn’t say anything.

"Clear the base?" Bucky guessed. "Make them an escape route?" He risked stepping closer. "Come on, Steve."

"You keep calling me that," said Steve.

"It’s your name." He licked his lips. "Steven Grant Rogers. That’s your name. They give you another one?"

"No," said Steve, and then, "I don’t—I don’t remember. I don’t think I have a—"

He stopped.

"Everyone’s got a name, Steve," said Bucky.

Steve glared at him. Bucky knew that glare. "Stop it."

"No," Bucky said.

" _Stop_ it." Steve lifted the knife, a threat.

"I’m not gonna," said Bucky. "You didn’t stop when it was me."

"You," said Steve. "My mission is you."

"I figured," said Bucky. "But I’m your friend, Steve. You don’t have to do this. I don’t think you want to." He took another step closer and reached slowly for the knife. "Come on."

Steve backed sharply away. "If you’re my friend, why don’t I know you?" he said. "You’re lying."

Bucky held up his hands. "It’s me, Bucky. You do know me. You know me like I know you, Steve. We’ve been friends since we were kids."

"I don’t know you," said Steve again, and it felt like being stabbed for a second, before Bucky reminded himself that it wasn’t fucking true.

"You do," he said. "Trust me, you do."

Steve looked pale and strained, and then his jaw set and he said, "They told me not to listen to you."

Bucky was still scrabbling for the next thing to say when he attacked.

It was pure cold instinct on Bucky’s part that brought the metal arm up to stop the knife as it came down towards him. He’d forgotten again that he was holding the shield; the blade skittered off the painted vibranium surface and he could tell Steve had jarred his wrist with the bad angle against a surface that wouldn’t give. Steve snarled and came at him again, still with the knife. Steve in his right mind would have dropped it by now, he didn’t need it, he was plenty deadly with just his fists, but Bucky remembered being handed weapons and using them simply because they happened to be there. He blocked again, thinking fast. He was still barefoot and shirtless, ready for the chair; he didn’t have anything but the arm and the shield in his favor, and he was pretty sure that if he tried one of Steve’s fancy throwing moves with the shield Steve would simply catch it and then he’d _really_ be fucked.

Hydra knew what the Winter Soldier could do. They'd been counting on Captain America being better. Bucky gave ground before Steve’s fast attacks, dodging and blocking and dodging again, stepping back and back until he was almost against the wall. He didn't know what else to do. How did you fight someone without hurting them?

It wasn’t something he’d ever needed to know.

Next time Steve came in close he didn’t try to dodge, took the hammer of Steve’s left hook right on the jaw and didn’t let the sudden glow of pain and dizziness stop him from putting all his weight behind the shield and pushing. The thing doubled as a ram easy enough, and now it was Steve who was stumbling back a pace or two, far enough that Bucky could snake an ankle around to trip him and force him down. They rolled together and the shield slipped off Bucky’s arm and skittered across the floor. "What the hell kind of weapon is that thing?" demanded Steve above him.

"Always wanted to ask you that," Bucky got out. He grabbed Steve’s wrist and tried to twist, get the knife off him. _Bucky_ could use a knife all right, if he had to. "It seems to work for you."

He saw the dubious look flash across Steve’s face, and the way his gaze slipped away from Bucky for a second. He thought he knew that look, though he’d never seen Steve wear it. He knew it from himself. He used the moment to twist Steve's wrist and slam his hand against the ground.

"Drop the knife," he panted, "come on, drop it—"

Exactly the wrong thing to say, he realized at once.

Steve’s eyes snapped back to his face, and his expression went stubborn. Not remembering didn’t make him any less Steve Rogers, which meant—Bucky twisted out from underneath him seconds before the knife came round in an arc that should have slashed across his throat. It left a shallow cut along his collarbone instead, and there was a ringing sound when it hit the metal of his shoulder. "Steve, please," Bucky said. "You’ve got to listen to me—you’ll hate yourself for this, you’ve got to stop."

"Save your breath," said Steve. Bucky reached for the knife again, got his metal hand around the blade and held on, because at least that way Steve couldn’t stab him with it. Steve growled and his other hand went round Bucky’s throat, and Bucky—

could see a way to win this fight, for a given value of winning.

His mind was playing through the moves already. He could force Steve’s arm back far enough to dislocate his shoulder, and the pain would make Steve stop choking him long enough for Bucky to move, and then—the rest of it was there in his mind like a picture, Steve falling backwards, not ready, Bucky could snatch the knife and then—

But that didn’t matter at all, because if he hadn’t been able to do it two months ago when he hadn’t known his own name, he could never do it now.

He stopped struggling, went limp under Steve, and that surprised Steve enough that he hesitated for a second. His grip on Bucky’s throat went soft. Bucky hadn’t been expecting that but he wasn’t going to waste it. He surged up and flipped them over, pressed Steve down with all his weight on him and the metal hand still gripping the blade of the knife, and then he didn’t know what else to do, so he kissed him.

Steve’s body was a long tense line beneath him, and his mouth was hard and stubborn under Bucky’s, and Bucky didn’t have any idea what he was doing. "You know me," he breathed against Steve’s lips. "I know you and you know me."

It was like—like before, when he’d let himself go to the chair, and he’d kissed Steve and Steve hadn’t reacted. Except that hadn’t been Steve, and this was, this _was_.

Bucky let go of the blade and closed his eyes and kissed him again. Steve could stab him now, if he wanted. Bucky prayed to God he wouldn’t, but this was Steve, and he couldn’t win this without hurting him, and he wasn’t gonna hurt him.

He felt Steve’s body shift, and then the hand that wasn’t holding the knife came up and touched Bucky’s hair. Steve’s lips parted a little under his, soft.

Bucky let out a breath that wasn’t a sob and broke away. He looked down at Steve’s face. There was a familiar wrinkle of uncertainty between Steve’s eyebrows. He blinked a few times and bit his lip hard. He looked up at Bucky like he didn’t know what he was seeing. Like he wanted to.

Finally, sounding very small, sounding lost, he said, "Bucky?"

Bucky felt like his heart had turned over inside him. He got off Steve and held out his hands, palms up, empty, no threat. "Yeah, it’s me. Steve, it’s me. You know me. I’m not gonna hurt you."

Steve sat up slowly, staring at him. There was quiet for a long moment, and then his eyes slowly went big and horrified. "I was..." he whispered, and he looked at the knife he was still holding and dropped it like it burned. His face was starting to twist up into an awful expression. "Oh god," he said. "Bucky. Oh god."

"Hey, no, none of that," Bucky said. "You’re fine. Everything’s fine."

"I could have—"

"It’s fine. Steve. I’m fine. You’re okay."

Steve scrambled onto his knees and then dragged him into a crushing embrace. His arms were tight around Bucky and his face was buried in the side of Bucky’s neck. Bucky carefully put his arms around Steve in return, and then held him tighter. He could feel Steve shaking. "You’re okay," he said again. "Steve. Steve. I got you." He turned his head and pressed his face against Steve’s hair. He could feel the warmth of Steve’s too-hot body everywhere, he could _smell_ him. He was real. "I got you," he said. "I’m here. You’re okay, you’re fine." He squeezed his eyes shut. "Jesus Christ, I thought you were dead."

Steve made a wet noise that could just about have been a laugh against his throat and didn’t move. "That’s usually my line," he said, muffled. "Bucky—"

"Makes a change, don’t it," Bucky said. He stroked Steve’s back carefully. "No, shh, don’t start crying on me, Steve. Stevie. You’re fine."

Steve’s fingers curled tight where his arms were wrapped around him. Bucky could feel the pressure of his fingertips on the metal arm; he could feel their warmth on his good side. "’m not crying. Don't call me Stevie," he said.

"Sure you’re not," Bucky said, and found he was smiling against Steve’s hair. Steve—

—had been beaten half to death by a couple of kids who’d taken exception to his face when they were eleven or so. There’d been blood and Bucky had been scared out of his mind, and Steve’d had tear tracks down his face along with the dirt and the blood, but he’d gotten up on his own feet and hardly let Bucky support him even though he’d needed it. He’d said it then too, stubborn as hell. _I’m not crying_. And Bucky had only been thinking about getting him somewhere safe to patch him up without Steve’s ma or his realizing they’d been in a dust-up again, and so he’d just said, _sure, Steve, sure you’re not,_ tugging him along with a hand under his elbow—

He remembered it clear as day.

"—grinning about?"

"That time you got into it with—those two redheaded kids at school, remember?" Bucky said, even though he hadn’t heard half the question. "And you weren’t crying then either."

"Shut up," said Steve, sounding embarrassed. He pulled away from Bucky a little, enough that they could see each other’s faces. "You remember that?"

"I remember your face with two black eyes," Bucky said. "Unforgettable."

Steve ducked his head, laughed quietly. "Bucky."

"Come back here," Bucky said, and didn’t wait for Steve to move, just dragged him back in. "God, Steve." He felt like his heart would pound out of his chest. He hadn't been ready for this. He hadn't been ready for any of it.

"Do I ask what happened to your clothes?" said Steve after a moment, still holding on tight.

"Took ‘em off."

"I can see that," said Steve, but his grip on Bucky tightened. His hands were hot against Bucky’s bare back. One of them slid up to the back of Bucky’s neck and curved around it, and Bucky closed his eyes again to feel it better. "Okay, I’m not asking."

"It was a cunning plan," Bucky told him. His human hand had found its way to Steve’s waist, where it fit nicely. "I needed an in. You missed a thing or two while you were out."

Steve said, "Zola—"

"Got him," said Bucky with satisfaction.

"You—"

This whole place had been under Zola's networked eyes. Bucky raised his voice. "Hey, Mnemosyne. How’s it going?"

"Pursuit continues," answered a sweet alto voice out of speakers in the walls. Steve startled and looked around. "Target on the run. Estimated deletion at seventy percent."

"Got him," Bucky said again.

Steve started to smile. "Sam and Natasha?"

"I, uh, left them with a robot army to fight," Bucky said. "But they should be fine. They’re pretty good."

Steve stared at him, and then laughed. "Yeah, they are. But we’d better go and help."

"Yeah," said Bucky, though he would happily have stayed right where he was, holding onto Steve—who was safe, who was alive—forever. He knew better than to think Steve would ever stay safe in one place long, though. He needed someone watching his back. Several people, preferably, but Bucky was always gonna be one of them.

Steve picked up his shield. After a moment's hesitation, he offered it to Bucky. Bucky shook his head. "There's still a few Hydra operatives down here," he said. "Anyway, it's yours."

The remnants of Hydra stayed well out of their way, though. Steve and Bucky went at a jog back up through the winding maze of tunnels to the room called CONTROL: MASTER where the chair stood like a throne. There they saw Sam and Natasha burst through the doors from the main facility under Pleasantview. Sam was in the lead, long-legged. They both looked sweaty and tired, and the cold thing in Bucky’s mind noted that Natasha was favoring her left leg.

Both of them skidded to a halt when they spotted Steve and Bucky. Then Sam started running again. Steve met him halfway, and Bucky hung back and watched as Sam grabbed him in a strong hug and pounded him on the back. "You really had us going for a second there," Sam was saying. "I should’ve known. I should’ve known."

"Looks like you’ve been busy," said Steve. "Heard there was an army out there. Leave any for me?"

"Nah, it was only a small army. Not worth your time," Sam said. He let Steve go and swiped the back of his hand across his eyes, but he was grinning. "And then they started falling over, and that just left the Hydra guys. No problem. I take it you two got the virus going?"

Steve shook his head. "I was out of it," he said. "It was all Bucky."

Sam turned to Bucky, took a deep breath, and said, "I hope you know you are the most convincing goddamn double-bluffing son of a bitch I ever met."

Bucky said, "Well, you have low standards. You usually spend your time with this lunk," and tilted his head at Steve. "He couldn’t lie his way out of a wet paper bag."

"True," said Sam, and then he gave Bucky a bear hug, same as he’d given Steve, complete with pounding on the back. "When you walked out of there I swear I thought—what you wanted us all to think, I guess. I’m sorry you had to do it alone. You know we’d’ve had your back."

"You’d’ve given the game away, you mean," Bucky said. He returned the hug cautiously. Not something he was used to yet, people touching him. He thought maybe he might get the hang of it again sometime. Sam let him go fast and kept grinning at him. "Zola thought he knew what he was dealing with, with me."

Sam stepped back. He looked Bucky up and down, his grin turning into a thoughtful look. "And yet somehow I don’t think that guy knew anything about you," he said.

"Maybe not," said Bucky, mouth quirking. He looked away. The eye contact, and Sam’s knowledge, felt like too much.

Not in a bad way, though.

His gaze fell on Natasha. She was hanging back from the little reunion. He saw her reach to her belt. When she lifted her hand again her robot detector took a second to flash its little blue light. It was Steve she was watching. Bucky caught her eye. She shrugged and walked over.

Her face was doing something strange, but she’d got it under control by the time she reached the three of them. She walked right past Sam and Bucky and punched Steve lightly in the chest. It was nowhere near enough to hurt him, and it was telegraphed plenty in advance. Bucky knew it was coming even if Steve didn’t. He obviously didn’t, though. He looked surprised, and then hilariously wounded.

"Don’t do that," Natasha said.

"What?" said Steve.

"Scare me," said Natasha. "Don’t do it."

"I, uh," said Steve. "Okay?" He looked down at her face. "Sorry. I’m sorry."

"Good," she said, and stepped back.

Sam gestured with both hands and gave Steve a meaningful look. Steve looked confused. Sam did the gesture again, bigger this time. Natasha raised one eyebrow. Bucky swallowed a laugh. Steve said, "What?"

Sam gave up and said, "Give her a _hug_ , Steve."

"I’m all right," Natasha said. She tucked her hair behind her ear. "I knew it was a trick."

Steve said, "I thought you only pretended to know everything." He pulled her into an embrace before she could finish coming up with a smart answer. Bucky thought he was the only one who could see her face, the way she closed her eyes and the very slight tremble of her mouth. When she let Steve go she gave Bucky a brief hard look as if to say, _so what?_ Like she was embarrassed someone had spotted her feeling something.

Bucky said without thinking about it, "Hey, I cried all over him."

"What? No you didn’t. You beat me up," said Steve.

"You were trying to stab me," Bucky told him. "I was crying on the inside."

Natasha’s lips quirked.

"He was trying to stab you? _Steve_?" said Sam.

"Yeah," said Steve. All the smile vanished from his expression. He looked down at himself in the Hydra blacks and said, "They tried to do to me what they did to Bucky, I guess."

"I would be surprised if that wasn’t the plan for all of us," said Natasha.

Sam looked very grim suddenly. "That... would explain a few things," he said, and didn’t elaborate. Both Steve and Natasha seemed to know what he meant. Bucky remembered suddenly that Sam had been kidnapped by Zola before, ages ago. Before Bucky had even realized Zola was still in the picture.

He swallowed. He was going to say something. He was going to say—

"That was the plan," he said. "Not just for you." He was waiting for the pain, ready for it. But he was still going to—"For everyone," he said. "For the world. That was what he wanted."

And he stopped, shocked. His head felt clear. That hadn’t _hurt_.

"That would have been useful information to have a little earlier," Natasha commented after a moment.

Bucky glared at her. "I was _trying_."

Steve moved a little closer to him, put his hand not-quite on Bucky’s elbow but close. Close enough that Bucky could hold onto him if he wanted to.

"I know you were trying," Natasha said gently. "I saw."

Bucky subsided. "Yeah. Well." Steve did touch him then. Warm hand on his elbow. It was nice, having him there, steadying. "I dunno why I can say it now. I couldn’t before."

"If I was an expert on deep conditioned psychological triggers as applied to brainwashed assassins, I feel like I’d have a job with an actual office. Maybe a desk and a filing cabinet and a potted plant. Definitely less combat," Natasha said. She shrugged. "Two plants, even."

"Maybe it helps that you know he’s dead," said Steve quietly.

"Seventy percent," said Bucky, but he leaned into Steve's touch a little more. Steve squeezed his elbow, the corner of his mouth turning up.

"Seventy percent," he agreed. "And counting."

Natasha looked between them and laughed suddenly, eyes crinkling at the corners. "Well, good," she said, and it wasn't clear exactly what she was talking about. "I think. Now let's get out of here."

"Seconded," said Sam fervently.

"The sooner the better," said Steve. "We should report in. And then—"

"Then?" said Bucky.

"Then I want to go home," said Steve. "And not worry about anything for a week or two."

"Captain America wants some downtime?" said Sam. "Now that's something you don't hear every day."

Steve rolled his eyes. "What can I say, it's been a long week."

"Been a long couple of months," said Bucky, low.

There was a pause. "Been a long century," Steve said.

Bucky ducked his head. "The longest."

"Don't get me wrong, it's the best thing I ever heard," Sam said, looking between them with his eyebrows up. "There's times I thought the only way you'd ever give yourself a rest was if someone sat on you."

"Hey—"

Bucky smirked. "Good to know some things never change," he said. "He used to be easier to sit on."

"Probably take all three of us now," Sam agreed.

"I don't want to boast," Steve said. "But I could lift all three of you."

"I'm heavier than I look," Bucky informed him, flexing the metal arm. Steve gave him an unimpressed look, but there was a smile hidden in his eyes. Bucky couldn't call to mind exactly a time he'd see that before, Steve grumbling and pretending he didn't think Bucky was funny, fooling no one. He thought he had, though. He was pretty sure he had. And if he never remembered the last time, he could still remember _this_ time.

"Well," said Natasha. "As soon as the Winter Soldier can bring himself to get dressed—"

Oh, right. Bucky snorted. "Fine."

There was a pile of mostly black in the corridor, all the clothes and weapons he'd abandoned at Zola's command, and his boots lined up next to them. He poked at it with one bare toe, and then bent and picked up the t-shirt and tugged it on. He shoved his feet into the boots. He thought for a second and then added one of the knives—the one Natasha had given him, back at the Tower. That would do. "Ready," he said.

"What about the rest of it?" said Natasha.

Bucky looked at the dark pile. It had been useful when he needed it. He'd need things like it again, because Steve was never quitting and Bucky was never letting him go out there alone. But right now—

"No army left out there?" he said.

Natasha shook her head.

"Think I'll leave it, then."

He'd get other weapons. Maybe he could get Tony to build him that missile launcher.

 

* * *

 

In the ruined garden that surrounded Pleasantview Bucky hung back a few steps from the others. After a moment Steve dropped back to join him. Up ahead Natasha and Sam started having a conversation about music, loud and cheerful.

"Nice of them to let us know they're not listening," said Steve.

Bucky huffed a quiet laugh. "Yeah. You okay?"

"I—I'm fine. I'm really sorry," said Steve.

"For what?"

"For—"

Bucky gave him a look. "Not your fault."

"But I could have—"

"Listen," Bucky said. "All the—all the people I killed. Everything Hydra made me do. And when I hurt you. Was that my fault?"

"No!"

Bucky kept looking at him. Steve avoided his gaze.

"Not your fault," Bucky said eventually. "Hypocrite."

"You fought them for decades," Steve said. "You broke through what they did to you even after seventy years. I should've—"

"Should've nothing," Bucky said. "Steve, you woke up after five minutes. Are you saying it shouldn't have worked at all? Because they had seventy years to practice their brainwashing techniques. They got pretty good at it." He knocked their shoulders together. "You're only human."

"You never did let me get away with any bullshit," Steve said quietly. He was smiling crookedly.

"Good for me," Bucky said. "Stop trying to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, Steve. Sometimes things happen."

"Okay," said Steve. "Okay." He slipped his hand into Bucky's. "You're only human too, you know."

Steve's hand was warm. "I know," Bucky said. "I know."

"Are _you_ okay?"

Bucky looked up at the tangles of the big green bushes. "I know this place," he said. "They kept me here for a while."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Steve's free hand curl into a fist. He said, "Once Fury's people are done going over it, there'll be nothing left."

"Mmm," said Bucky. That was a nice thought. He hoped they buried the basements, and the labyrinth underneath. He hoped they ripped the house down and made a bonfire out of anything that would burn. He hung on tight to Steve's hand. "Tell 'em to leave the garden."

"You want it fixed up?" Steve said carefully after a minute.

"Nah," Bucky said. He kicked at a drift of last fall's dead leaves and they scattered wetly. "Just leave it alone."

Steve squeezed his hand. "Okay."

 

* * *

 

The main gates were hanging open and Tony was waiting on the other side with folded arms. "So _someone_ —naming no names—broke into my garage and stole my car," he said.

Everyone looked at Bucky.

"You had a dozen cars in there," Bucky said. "Figured you wouldn’t miss one."

"Little late to the party, aren't you, Tony?" said Natasha.

"I didn't know where you were till Mnemosyne alerted JARVIS!" Tony protested. "I don't know how _he_ knew where you were—"

"Lucky guess," Bucky said, because it was easier than explaining. "Calm down. Mission complete. It's all fine."

"I wanted to help," Tony said. He paused. "Huh, that sounded whiny. I'm a grown man, I don't whine. Never mind."

"You did the virus," Bucky said. "You helped."

"Yeah, okay—I'm just used to being Q to my own James Bond—" Natasha snorted. "Shut up, I could be Bond, I'm smooth. I look good in black tie. No sniggering."

"Do you know what they're talking about," muttered Bucky to Steve as Natasha broke into actual laughter, laughing almost too hard to answer.

"I think it's a movie?" Steve said. "I've still got catching up to do." He hadn't let go of Bucky's hand.

 

* * *

 

Tony had apparently flown there in a very small very fast plane with a big Stark Industries logo on the side. "It's new. It's _stealth_ ," he said proudly.

"Looks pretty stealthy to me," said Steve.

"Yeah, it—oh, he thinks he's funny. He thinks he's funny. _She_ thinks he's funny," he added, with an eye roll for Natasha, who was smirking.

"He's kind of funny," said Sam. "You gotta admit it."

Bucky hid a smile. "How's it stealth?" he said.

"You're the only one I like. _Invisibility_ is how it's stealth. Like the old helicarrier," he added to Steve and Natasha, "but I miniaturized it. Stark proprietary holographic technology."

"Nice," said Bucky appreciatively.

" _Thank_ you." Tony bounced on the balls of his feet. "It's also really, really fast. So I can give you a lift back to the Tower, and—where are you going?"

Bucky wandered over to the plane. "JARVIS?" he said, testing.

"May I be of assistance, sir?" said the smooth voice.

He swallowed. "How's Mnemosyne doing?"

There was a brief pause, and then JARVIS said, "Deletion still in progress. Estimated at ninety-two percent."

Ninety-two percent. Zola being wiped out of the world piece by piece, like he'd never lived.

Well, he was the one who'd chosen to make a machine of himself.

"Can you let Steve know when it's a hundred?" Bucky said. "Send him a text, or something."

"Certainly, sir."

"Thanks."

Bucky went back to the others. "No need for a lift," he told Tony. "We're heading back to DC. Steve wants some downtime. We'll take the car." He looked at Sam. "You coming?"

"Sounds good," said Sam.

"You'll take the—fine. Fine. You stole it fair and square," said Tony. He made a face and an expansive arm gesture. "Be my guest."

 

* * *

 

Natasha went back to New York with Tony. "You might not hear from me for a while," she said.

"Europe?" said Steve.

"Need to know," said Natasha with a smile. "I'll call you if I need you to know."

"Take care of yourself."

"I always do."

She hugged Sam and Steve goodbye, and whispered something in Steve's ear that made him laugh and go red at the same time. Then she came and stood in front of Bucky and gave him a serious look. He waited.

"Remember what I said," she said at last. "It gets easier."

"Not easy, though," Bucky said.

"No," she agreed. "Not that." She held out her hand. Bucky clasped it briefly. "Keep an eye on him," she said. "And—good luck, James."

"You too," said Bucky, not meaning her mission. "And... thanks."

 

* * *

 

Sam insisted on getting a chance to drive the Maserati. Bucky was fine with that. Steve took the passenger seat and Bucky stretched out as much as he could in the back. He kicked his boots off again. Steve figured out which button to press to make the roof of the car fold down. Sam tuned the radio to music Bucky didn't know. It was broad day, but he dozed off a little.

After an hour or so the car made a little chiming sound. "What was that?" Sam said.

"Apparently Tony's car can receive emails," said Steve after poking around for a moment.

"Oh yeah?"

"It's from JARVIS," said Steve. "It says... one hundred percent. Hey, Bucky," and Bucky could hear the grin in his voice without needing to open his eyes, "one hundred percent."

Bucky made a fist with his metal hand and punched the air lazily. Sam whooped and hit the gas, and the car almost flew down the open road.

 

* * *

 

Sam dropped them off at Steve’s apartment. "I’m keeping the car," he said. "I might sleep in the car." Steve laughed.

It was a long time since the night Bucky had left Steve's apartment by the window. He hadn't meant to come back. And then Zola had taken him, and he hadn't thought he'd ever get the chance. He kicked off the hateful boots just inside the door, then had to stop and just—look, for a moment. There was the couch where he'd slept in the beginning. Where he'd sat and stared at the wall while his mind ticked over from nothing to miserable nothing, reaching and reaching for memories he couldn't have, desperately playing the part of the old Bucky Barnes, like maybe if he got it right it would stick.

Steve's hand fell solid onto his shoulder. "You all right?"

"I..." said Bucky, and he reached up and caught Steve's hand in his. "...don't really want to talk about it."

Steve shrugged. "I'd say you should," he said, "but I'd be a hypocrite. Ask anyone." His fingers tightened around Bucky's.

Bucky tried to smile. "Say, why DC? I never asked."

"Well, my job was here," said Steve. "Until I blew it up. And Sam's here. The home where Peggy's—it's not far away. And New York was," his mouth tightened a little, and he finished, "full of ghosts."

"Ghosts," Bucky said.

Steve closed his eyes.

"You don't have to—"

"No, I—" Steve swallowed. "Everything looked the same, but wrong. Out of the corner of my eye things'd be familiar, the shapes of buildings, the streets, but if I turned my head—Or I'd see someone walking the other way and I'd think I knew them, but of course I didn't. There were days I'd walk round places I used to know and I just—well. There were days I thought I saw you on every street corner." He licked his lips. "I wasn't doing so well. In New York. So Fury moved me to DC and gave me something to do."

"Being Captain America."

"Nice thing about Captain America," said Steve, "he doesn't have a lot of time to feel sorry for himself."

Christ. "C'mere," said Bucky. He wrapped both arms around Steve and held on tight.

Steve let out a little laugh and clung. "God, Bucky, I missed you," he said. "I missed you so _much_."

Bucky wanted to say something like, _I missed you too_ , but he hadn’t, hadn’t known to miss him. The Winter Soldier had been a hollow man, an empty shell who’d known nothing and felt nothing; it had been him, all right, but him with half his soul locked away. If there hadn’t been Steve to know him—if Bucky Barnes in the old days hadn’t been smart enough to save up everything about him that was worth saving and leave it all in Steve’s hands—

Well, he had, though. And you couldn’t go wrong choosing Steve.

Steve was still hanging onto him, but he began to let go when Bucky didn’t say anything. Bucky let him pull away. "So remember before when we said later?" he said.

"Um," said Steve.

Bucky smirked at him. "Is it later yet?"

Steve’s face was a picture—surprise, then pleasure, fading into something sweet and wicked that Bucky would’ve been happy to look at for a long time. "Guess it could be," he said, raising his eyebrows.

"Good," said Bucky, and kissed him.

Steve kissed back at once, mouth hot and eager. He cradled Bucky’s face in his hands like it was something precious, drawing him in close, thumbs brushing over his cheekbones. Bucky hummed into the kiss at the gentle touch. He set both his hands on Steve’s waist, where they still fit nicely. The metal one could only feel the strength and tension in the muscles under his fingers; the human hand felt the warmth, too. Steve kissed him harder, then broke away long enough to say, "You need a shave."

"I’ll get right on that," Bucky said, and tugged his head back down.

This kiss was hotter, wetter. Steve made a low shocked noise deep in his throat when Bucky’s tongue slid into his mouth. The sound went straight to Bucky’s cock. His body wanted him to push Steve down and climb on top of him right there, but he didn't know if that was the right thing, if that was what you did. He settled for kissing Steve deep, savoring the noises he was making, the way he couldn’t seem to keep steady on his feet. When Bucky bit down on his lip Steve made an obscene noise and half-fell forward into his arms. Bucky stumbled back a pace under the weight, laughed when the kiss broke, said, "You’re too heavy to do that."

"Sorry," said Steve, and rubbed his temple, and smiled. "Can I—"

"Only if you want to," Bucky said, and Steve was already reaching for him.

He started steering Bucky backwards as he was kissing him this time, walking him past the couch he was never sleeping on again if he could help it, pressing small fast smiling kisses against Bucky’s mouth and pulling away before Bucky could kiss him back properly. Bucky finally made a frustrated sound and used the metal arm to swing Steve around and push him against the wall by his bedroom door. He got a hand in Steve’s hair to hold him there and gave it to him with tongue. Steve went liquid against him, kissing back just as hard, and if he hadn’t had the wall on one side and Bucky on the other Bucky was pretty sure he would’ve fallen over.

"I don’t," Steve got out when they broke apart to breathe the next time, "don’t really know what I’m doing here, Bucky..."

Bucky shrugged. "Me either," he said honestly. He had a feeling he’d done things like this before, but he couldn’t summon up specifics; his body seemed to understand the moves, but his mind was sparking with astonishment and pleasure every time Steve touched him. All of it felt strange and new and good. "We seem to be doing all right so far," was all he said, hoping Steve could hear it in his voice, how good this was.

He kissed the corner of Steve’s mouth again, feeling it curl into a smile. Yeah, Steve got it.

"Just as long as you’re not expecting miracles," he murmured, turning his head into Bucky’s kiss.

"If this isn’t a world-class performance with champagne to follow I’ll be sorely disappointed, Rogers," Bucky said, right against his mouth. "Come on, Steve. You know me better than that."

It felt shivery-good to say it, and even better to feel Steve’s chest vibrate with laughter and hear him agree, low, "I do."

"Just let me," Bucky said. "I want to."

"Okay," said Steve. "Okay."

Some pushing and pulling got them finally through the door into Steve’s bedroom, and then Bucky shoved Steve down onto the bed and Steve dragged him down after. They made out some more, long slow dirty kisses. Steve slid his leg in between Bucky’s thighs and then looked pleased with himself when Bucky had to stop kissing him for a second to roll his hips and gasp at the friction against his cock.

In revenge Bucky pushed him onto his back and crawled on top of him, grinding his hips down deliberately against the line of Steve’s cock in his pants, making them both whimper. Steve’s eyes fluttered half-shut. He was flushed and gorgeous from this angle. Bucky mouthed at the strong line of his jaw and shuddered when Steve’s hands slid up under his shirt and rubbed long curved shapes against his back. He put his head down in the space between Steve’s neck and his shoulder, pressed his smile to the side of Steve’s throat, and said, "You sure we never did this before?"

Another laugh rumbled through Steve’s chest. He set his nails lightly into Bucky’s skin so the next long slow stroke of his hands was a delicious scratch. Bucky whimpered and thrust against Steve’s thigh. "I think I'd _know_ ," said Steve.

"I dunno. Got your brains scrambled recently," Bucky said. "Maybe you forgot."

"I can't believe you're joking about that," said Steve, sounding guiltily amused.

Bucky snickered. "If I can't do it, who can?"

"I suppose," Steve said, "you've got a point." He turned his head and pressed a kiss to Bucky’s hair. His hands had found the knot high in Bucky’s back that came from the weight of the metal arm pulling on muscle and bone, and he was digging his fingers in, loosening it up, sweet pressure almost on the edge of pain but not quite. Bucky moaned loudly. Getting on top of Steve had definitely been revenge for something at some point, but now it just seemed like he’d had a really good idea.

"And you spent seventy years on ice, couldn't have been good for you either," he mumbled, barely listening to what was coming out of his mouth. "I really managed to keep my hands off you?" They were so wrapped up in each other he could feel Steve’s chest move every time he drew a breath. "I must’ve been out of my mind."

He turned his head and licked along the tendon in the side of Steve's throat. Then he bit down and sucked. The small sounds Steve was making went desperate and loud. His skin tasted of salt and sweat, and the smell of him was everywhere. Bucky turned his head and rubbed his stubbled cheek against Steve's neck. Steve's hips jerked sharply and he made an embarrassing noise. Bucky could feel Steve's cock rubbing hard against his thigh, Steve trying and failing not to push up against him again. It was a good feeling. "I don't," Steve said, sounding distracted, and he got a handful of Bucky’s hair and dragged him up into another deep wet kiss.

Bucky closed his eyes and just let himself get kissed for a moment or two, luxuriating in Steve’s attention, his care. He set his teeth gently in Steve's plush lower lip. Steve breathed in sharply through his nose and his mouth opened. His touch on Bucky’s back went very light, and then his hands dropped to Bucky’s waist and gripped tight as he thrust up against Bucky’s thigh. Bucky could feel the sweet tension thrumming through him everywhere their bodies were touching. He'd forgotten what they were even talking about by the time Steve broke away to catch his breath and pant, "I—I—Bucky—guess I wasn't always this pretty—"

"Think you're pretty, do you?" Bucky murmured. He slid his right hand up under Steve's shirt, feeling the muscles twitch against the pass of his fingers. God, he wasn't wrong. But he thought—Bucky's memories of small Steve were still fragmentary and brittle, precious scraps of a past he'd never get back all the way. The clearest one he had was still the hallucination of small Steve leaning over him like a shield when Zola had had him, and that had never really happened. But still—"You were always something else."

He didn't know if he'd thought that before. It was what he thought now.

"Shut up," Steve said, too breathless to sound properly annoyed though he was giving it his best shot. His face was flushed, pink all over, deeper red on his cheeks. "You obviously—Anyway, it was illegal."

"Well, that sounds like something I'd care about," Bucky said. He rolled his hips again, deliberately, felt Steve push up into the press of his hard cock. Both of them moaned. Bucky hooked his fingers under the edge of Steve's shirt and tugged it up and off.

They both had to sit up to get rid of the shirt, and Steve let Bucky go to lift his arms. His pink blush went all the way down his chest. Bucky sat back on his haunches to look at him, and if it was a wrench to let go it was worth it for the view, Steve shirtless and flushed, biting his lip, his fair hair sticking up every which way. Bucky's gaze dropped to the bulge in his pants and then went back up to his face, and now Steve looked slightly embarrassed as well as turned on, but he still raised his eyebrows and leaned back on his elbows, spreading his legs a little so the fabric went tight, showing off.

Bucky grinned. "Guess you're a little pretty," he said.

"Thanks," said Steve, poker-faced. "I try."

Bucky kept looking at him a moment longer, just looking, trying to fix the picture in his mind. Something to keep against dark times. Something to come back to. He got distracted enough that he didn’t notice the sudden glint in Steve’s eyes until it was too late, and then Steve jumped him.

There was a flash—a fraction of a second—when Bucky’s body felt the weight of Steve on him and the suddenness of it and wanted to lash out, wanted to fight, to do the only thing it knew how to do properly.

Only a flash and the feeling was gone; it was just Steve on top of him, Steve grinning down at him for a second like he thought he’d gotten away with something. It was Steve pulling Bucky’s shirt off him with greedy hands, face going soft and open when he saw Bucky laid bare under him. Bucky touched the knuckles of his human hand to the side of Steve’s face, and Steve closed his eyes and turned just slightly and kissed them. Bucky opened his hand and urged Steve down onto him with a hand curved around the base of his skull, all that strength and smooth skin to touch, and he—god, what he wouldn’t have given to have both hands human just for this, just so he could feel Steve’s warmth against his palm and not have to stop touching his hair to do it. But this was good. They kept kissing and rubbing against each other, and Bucky smoothed his hand down the middle of Steve’s broad back to his tailbone, grinned at the way Steve squirmed, and palmed his ass the way he clearly wanted.

Yeah, this was very, very good.

"I want to," said Steve, "can I—" and then he apparently gave up on trying to explain himself and just stroked down Bucky’s stomach, making him tense and breathe in quick, before he brushed his fingers along the trail of hair and hooked them into the waistband of Bucky’s pants.

"Anything you want," Bucky said. Steve was already deftly undoing the buttons and urging Bucky to lift up so he could pull the black pants and underwear off together. His eyes looked very dark as he licked his lips and stared at Bucky’s body. For a moment Bucky felt, absurdly, self-conscious (and when had he ever felt that? When had his nakedness last been something to give a damn about? Not since—)

When Steve’s hand closed tentatively around Bucky’s cock Bucky let out a loud moan and his head fell back. He twisted his hips up into Steve’s grip. "Come on," he said, "Steve, more than that, give me more. Come on—"

"Take it easy," said Steve, but he sounded satisfied. His hand tightened around Bucky’s cock and he started jerking Bucky off, steady confident pulls of his hand, and Bucky—god, hadn’t even thought of this in such a long time, hadn’t remembered, hadn't _known_ that anything you did with your body could feel this good. It was fantastic. He reached out for Steve, wanting him close, and Steve lay down half-on him again and kept jerking him off. He was watching Bucky’s face with wide blue eyes, and breathing almost as hard as Bucky was every time Bucky thrust into his hand; he _liked_ doing this for him.

Bucky’s cock was so hard it nearly hurt. He was leaking at the tip, and Steve left off jerking him for a moment to rub his hand over the head, get the wetness all over his palm. Then he went back to it harder and faster, warm palm and long fingers squeezing hot tight wet around Bucky’s cock. Bucky’s moans turned into curses and pleas that made Steve grin, a little stunned-looking, and then drop his head and kiss him hard. When Bucky came a few seconds later it was with Steve’s tongue buried deep in his mouth, Steve’s body covering his, Steve’s hand firmly milking his cock and then going slack and gentle as Bucky finally twitched and kicked a little, sensitive.

"Thought you said I shouldn’t expect much," he said, when he could remember how words worked again.

"Well, that one I did already know how to do," said Steve, smirking rueful-sweet. He rubbed the inside of Bucky’s thigh with his wet hand.

Bucky shivered. He felt loose and easy and really, really good, and the image Steve had just put in his head was a good one. Steve touching himself, god. He rolled onto his side and tugged not-very-effectively at Steve’s pants. His coordination was shaky and he didn’t care. "Why are you still wearing these?" he said, and then, "Show me."

Steve got the rest of his clothes off in an eager rush. He let out an obscene sound when he got his hand around himself. His cock was hard and full, wet at the tip, red against the lighter color of his fingers as he gripped it. His eyes were fixed on Bucky as he stroked himself briskly. "Hey," said Bucky, and put his hand around Steve’s wrist. "Slow down."

"Slow _down_?" said Steve, and then swallowed a gasp as Bucky dropped his hand lower and tangled their fingers together around Steve’s cock.

"Yeah," Bucky said. He put his other arm around Steve’s shoulders to hold him close, and Steve leaned into the crook of Bucky’s left shoulder like he saw no difference between metal and flesh. "Slow down."

Steve’s breathing quickly turned into ragged, hungry gasps as Bucky slowly moved their hands together on him. His eyes kept fluttering closed and then blinking open again, like he wanted to watch but couldn’t help himself. Bucky could see the hitching rise and fall of his chest as he swallowed the noises he was trying not to make. He kept quiet to hear it better. When he took mercy on Steve and let him speed up the pace Steve groaned out loud. The pink flush on his chest got darker. He was sweating all over as he snapped his hips up into the tight warm doubled grasp of their hands.

"Bucky," he whispered right before he came, and Bucky held him tight while he shuddered and gasped with his face hidden against Bucky’s collarbone.

 

* * *

 

Bucky woke in the middle of the night and didn’t know what had woken him.

He didn’t remember when they’d gotten under the covers, but they must’ve at some point. Steve was sprawled on his front, breathing slow and deep. Bucky was sticky and sweaty, and there was dried come on his stomach and thigh. He scratched at it absently. They should maybe have showered. He still felt good, relaxed, easy.

He brushed his hand against the side of Steve’s elbow, which was warm. Feeling daring, he shuffled closer, pressed his face into the soft skin of Steve’s shoulder blade. He smelled like sweat and sex and himself. Bucky closed his eyes.

"Okay?" he heard Steve mumble.

"Okay," Bucky said. He kissed the nape of Steve’s neck.

"'M not a robot," Steve murmured. He turned over and spread his arms wide, stretching, before he hooked one around Bucky’s neck and tugged him down against his side. "’M sleeping."

Bucky stilled halfway through a soft laugh as he suddenly thought that he'd heard that before, sometime. _G'way, Bucky, 'm sleeping._ He didn’t know when. They’d shared rooms before the war—that was part of the history he'd memorized—so maybe sometime then. It was strange, though; it didn't hurt or sicken him, not knowing. It didn't matter. It didn't have to matter. Now was now.

"Bucky?" said Steve, sounding a little more awake, and worried.

Bucky shook his head, which made Steve shift and mumble and move his hand so he could touch Bucky’s hair. "S'okay," he said. "Just thinking. Not a robot either."

"I _know_ ," said Steve, only half-awake but still hilariously offended.

Bucky smiled. "Go back to sleep," he said. He closed his eyes again. Steve's arm around him was warm. Steve was warm all over. "It's okay. I know you."

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr!](http://emilyenrose.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Out of the Dead Land](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4960468) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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